Elena Yee

Since last semester I’ve been working with a faculty member in my program on a research article about suicide assessment. More accurately, she invited me to be one of the co-writers for the article, which was a surprise and has been a remarkable learning experience thus far. It was also timely since I was taking the two required courses for research that included quantitative statistics. For most of my classmates, learning about statistics in the context of research was daunting and dispiriting.

One of my favorite bloggers is Eric Barker and this past week he had a good one about the truth of self-esteem. The truth being that it's more about self-compassion and I agree. Check out his posting here.

Even before I decided to return to graduate school for mental health counseling, I was already interested in psychology, and reading news articles or watching videos about mental health and different therapies. I've been particularly interested in how social media and technology has taken up much of our mental and emotional space.

Last semester I took my third practicum class, which afforded me the opportunity to delve more deeply into my counselor identity, to learn from my classmates and to apply what I have learned in the past year and summer when meeting with clients. I found that my interaction from my classmates, many of which who had been in the profession for some time, rewarding, challenging and encouraging.

Last week I was reading on the ACA Open Forum about the annual conference being held in Montreal, Canada. It was interesting for me to read how some members felt that ACA is an “American” organization that should hold its conference in the United States. I wonder how some would respond if the conference was in Puerto Rico or Guam forgetting that the U.S. includes territories