I currently live about 35-ish minutes away from campus, and commute to Detroit each week day. I am so excited to be going into my last semester, and wow what a journey it has been. It has been everything I never expected for myself, yet everything I needed to experience during this time in my life. When I started my undergraduate career, I was sure I was to become a pediatrician. I thought all of my life experiences leading up to 3 years ago had willed me to pursue medicine, but once I gained the courage and confidence to stray away from that idea- my purpose, my journey, and my experiences became so much more clear. Quickly after I started experiencing the Detroit community, its people, its problems, and its beauties, during the middle of my first semester in 2021, I decided to change my major from Neuroscience to Psychology.
Although, I love learning about the brain- I soon figured out the program at WSU was extremely focused towards careers in medicine and I realized that my career and my future wasn’t something I had to decide at age 18. While simultaneously being part of the honors college, I took a course during my first semester where we had to explore the Detroit community. For this project, I decided to go undercover and volunteer at a local non-profit called Crossroads of Michigan, which provides emergency services (transportation, food, pantry items, clothing, diapers, ID, Social Security Cards, housing, etc.) to [Metro] Detroiters.
Although I was instructed to simply find out more about the organization and how it operates, and then to write about it, I quickly fell in love with the organization, their mission, and all the people that were serviced there. This led me to be extremely interested in homelessness, unique to Detroit, and I soon joined at WSU laboratory that explores this exact issue. I spent my 2nd semester of Freshman year and my whole summer interviewing homeless individuals in the Detroit area about their experiences, their struggles, barriers, and histories. While I gained insight into so many of the frustrations caused by the city and its officials, I also gained an infatuation with the resilience and strength cultivated by the experiences of the Detroit people.
All the while, I was becoming more and more engaged and captured in all that psychology careers had to offer. Upon going into my sophomore year, I gained an opportunity to hold an internship at a private practice mental health clinic that provided trauma-informed, neurodivergent-affirming, and culturally-responsive care to children and families throughout Michigan. During this internship year, I had memorable interactions with professionals in the field, clients who were determined to make changes in their mental health, and children who were filled with overflowing joy and contagious happiness. This is where I ultimately decided that I would pursue a career in psychology focused on making mental health services accessible and progress achievable for minority, marginalized, and immigrant families, and that I would be a forever student- learning from my clients’ and mentors’ experiences and stories. This brings me to now, my last semester of my 3rd year at WSU, where I am currently awaiting PhD program interviews in clinical and community psychology.
