experience along the way. My hope is to landa job as a college counselor at a university where I plan to complete a Doctoral program in clinicalpsychology. Another motivation for this interim short-term strategy is that I am already forty yearsold and I want to make damn sure that I have an employable credential in the event that I should notcomplete my long term goals of a PhD/Psy.D. The bills are stacking up and I want to know that Ihave a means of paying them. On a less selfish note, I also chose college counseling because I have direct experience in thisarena and feel I will be able to relate to many of the problems I will be presented with by students.I myself received abundant counseling while an undergraduate for vocational as well aspsychotherapeutic reasons. I know what its like to have and be treated for clinical depression, whilebeing a full time student. This kind of empathy and insight is hard to learn from less than first handexperience and can be a most valuable asset when working with someone who is suffering with aproblem or condition that you know about from first hand experience. If not for the help I receivedfrom counselors and therapists, I really dont think I would be in this class today.Although short-term approaches can be found based on any of the current therapy theoriesthat exist today, the two most common are psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral basedapproaches to brief therapy and counseling (Nugent). I would integrate both of these approaches andalso some Gestalt techniques (especially for group work) into my own eclectic/integrative style ofbrief therapy/counseling. Of the several mainstream cognitive-behavioral short-term approaches (all based upon theprevious works of Ellis, Beck, Meichenbaum, Haley, M. Erickson, etc.), I believe that DonaldGenters Solution-focused model, is the best suited for the majority college student population(Nugent). In Solution-focused short-term therapy, the counselor d...
