Chapter 11
Gerber Graduates

I have officially graduated from counseling! I did the three tasks on my list of things to do before meeting with my counselor again and I guess that means I graduate. It was funny, I felt really happy when I went to the counseling center. I have things back in order, I’m going to my classes and doing my homework and I am working with my advisor to substitute something else in place of that dumb class I am failing. I should have everything in order for that tomorrow and then turn in the form and wait. Usually when I go to counseling I feel like the counselor and yesterday I practically was. My counselor is teaching a class on campus and he was telling me some of the problems he was having with it and asked me for some advice on how to deal with the situation. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I told him I wanted to get my Master’s in Counseling Education so he feels like he is giving me practice or something, who knows? It was cool though, I think I could be a counselor. But he also talked about a bunch of other stuff that actually really helped me. It was all almost too obvious and I was surprised I hadn’t thought about it myself, but I guess sometimes there needs to be another person to show you. He mentioned how I can pretty much work anywhere. I’m limited to just fields concerning my degree, and I just because I live back home doesn’t mean I have to stay in the same city. “Move to where the job is” he told me. I could do that. I’d like to do that. Real independence, real “grown-up-ness”. He also told me that when talking to whomever I needed to talk to about substituting that class to give them only one option at a time, first ask for the waiver, and then if they say ‘no’ ask them what I can do. Pick from their options but don’t act like I am willing to more than I actually am. It’s like when he told me to only tell my parents what they needed to know.
So today I went to my advisor to talk about this class and I kept remembering what my counselor said, “don’t tell them more than you have to.” So my advisor starts talking to me, he’s a cool guy, I’ve actually taken three classes from him, two last semester and he really liked me, he thought I was spectacular, well he said “fantastic”, but either way. So he starts talking to me about Prozac and Zoloft (which are actually in my computers spell-check…awkward). We talked about a few other things too. I was telling my roommate after I got home and she said that there must be something about me that makes people open up.