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“A lot of people enjoy snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.” ~ Carl Reiner
By Jaime | February 2, 2010
Today is February 2nd, a day I have looked forward to since I was a child. Even though I live in Western New York, I’ve always wished I lived in a warmer climate. I love the four seasons and all the different things Western New Yorkers are able to do because of our location (hike, ski, golf, best education, make snow angels, close to the border, the lakes…) , but deep down inside I just wish I could walk to the beach every day. So as you can imagine and probably already predicted, I have terrible news, Phil the groundhog has spoken and says six more weeks of winter. As it looks the proverb will be correct with March going, “in like a lion, out like a lamb.”
I do bare good news as well! I try to tell good news when I tell bad news, that way no one is 100% disappointed. Dr. Moll (chair of the Counseling and Human Services Department) recently sent the counseling students an email notifying us that “The federal government has issued regulations to require parity of health insurance coverage for mental health and addictive disorder services, realizing a long sought-for goal of American Counselors Association (ACA) and the rest of the behavioral health advocacy community. No longer will health insurance companies be allowed to use separate and unequal treatment limits and cost-sharing requirements to restrict use of mental health—and, for the first time, addictive disorder—services.” This is an amazing thing that has happened and we’re here to see it! We have to thank all of the professional counselors that lobbied and advocated for this all of these years. Now people will be more likely and able to get the help they need and deserve.
I want to also recognize Dr. Moll for another thing I just found out yesterday in my pre-practicum class. Approximately every 10 years the ACA revises their code of ethics, to make sure it is up-to-date and keeping with the times. This year was one of those years and Dr. Moll was a part of the revising process. I just think that is amazing that one of my professors and the chair of the Canisius counseling program is that involved in our profession.
We’re now into our third week of classes and things are going very well. I only have one more book to purchase! It worked out nicely because I have been buying them a few at a time; the last book, which I will probably get later on today or tomorrow, we haven’t started reading yet. So that keeps me from being so anxious about not having the book for that course yet; things always work out one way or another.
I am really enjoying my Research Techniques course so far, which is interesting because I got the chills when I realized that it was in the mandatory curriculum (because when I heard the title I thought…statistics). Dr. Rutter teaches the course in a way that so far I have taken to. I mentioned in my last blog that we all have to write a 25-30 page research proposal for that course, which seems like an endless task. So far he is teaching the course geared towards helping us do as well as we can with the paper; I am even excited about it now! The last class we went around the room sharing the topic we were thinking about writing our research proposal on and he and our classmates asked us detailed questions about our ideas. This helped map out different directions we may want to go and clarify any questions we had thus far.
As far as leisure this weekend, it was a pretty laid back weekend for me. A few undergraduate friends of mine with flew in from New York City on Friday and so a bunch of us got together and played Wii dance all night. I recommend this game — it is just too funny to watch and be a part of, seeing your friends battle each other in dances and really getting into it whether the rhythm is there or not. Then on Saturday after I got out of work, we all went to the Paddock Chevrolet indoor golf dome (right outside Buffalo in Tonawanda, N.Y) and played a competitive game of miniature golf. We split into two groups and played for pitchers of beer afterwards at dinner at Duff’s (famous chicken wings). Unfortunately, I was on the losing team. On Sunday night after work, I was able to relax and watch the Grammy’s.
Indoor miniature golf and driving range...so pretty!
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