VISTAS Career Counseling and Development

VISTAS Online is an innovative publication produced for ACA by Dr. Garry R. Walz and Dr. Jeanne C. Bleuer of Counseling Outfitters, LLC. Its purpose is to provide a means of capturing the ideas, information and experiences generated by the annual ACA Conference and selected ACA Division Conferences. Papers on a program or practice that has been validated through research or experience may also be submitted. This digital collection of peer-reviewed articles is authored by counselors, for counselors. VISTAS Online contains the full text of over 900 proprietary counseling articles published from 2004 to 2017.



Mourning and Spirituality as Agents in Career Happenstance

Peter A. Manzi

2011

I was going through my basement collection of academic boxes and came across some old case notes from the middle 1980s containing records of my work as a doctoral intern in two college counseling centers. The records were in the form of diaries or log books. Names and identifying data had been changed in the original notes. They were sealed and the discovery was like a time capsule. When I was an intern at the University of Rochester, I counseled "Eric" a 19 year old first semester sophomore who lost his dad in a car accident. The father fell asleep while driving home after a weekend of snowmobiling, and crashed into a large tree on a country road. The father, a form carpenter, was only 42 years old. Alcohol had not been a factor. This discovery seemed like a good time to reflect on my work as a mental health and vocational counselor, which can also inform the practice of other such counselors and counselor educators.

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