Lee Shadeck is a Counselor at the Personal Counseling office on campus. Along with this, he is also a member and team leader on the Critical Incident Response Team, the advisor to Behrend Save, and a member of Stand For State. The Personal Counseling office helps students work through any problems in their personal lives. The office offers individual counseling, crisis intervention, support groups, psychiatric services, and much more.
The Personal Counseling office is located on the first floor of the Reed Union Building in room 1, their hours are 8:00 a.m to 5:00 p.m, and you can call them at (814)-898-6504.
Official job title: College Counselor
Degrees and Licensure:
B.S. in Special Education
M.A. in College Counseling
LPC- Licensed Personal Counselor from the State of Pennsylvania
NCC Nationally Certified Counselor
What do you do at the counseling offices?
The vast majority of my job is providing one to one counseling with Behrend Students. Each counseling session lasts about 50 minutes. I meet with a student the first time and attempt to establish rapport and find out how they might most benefit from counseling or what brought them to counseling and then attempt to formulate a plan for that student. We generally meet weekly until we both feel he or she has met their goals. Last semester I saw 78 different student for a total of about 340 appointments in one on one sessions. We also offer some group and couples counseling.
We also do quite a bit of outreach within the Behrend community. We do presentations and programming in classes, in the residence halls, and during specific Personal Counseling Office supported events.
I am member and team leader on the Critical Incident Response Team here on campus. I am also the advisor to Behrend SAVE and am an active member of the Stand for State program. In both of those programs I have been attempting to continue to make Behrend a safe and comfortable place for all student to make home.
When students aren’t on campus I try to continue to learn about my profession and attempt to be a better, more versed therapist by constantly reading about the profession and learning new techniques and strategies.
What is your favorite part about the job?
Without a doubt the favorite part of my job is the sense of purpose that I get from helping Behrend students. I get to form an intimate bond with many of the students I meet with. It is so fulfilling to see people leave your office feeling better than when they walked in. It is equally enjoyable to see their progress over a period of weeks, months, and years. I get to play a pivotal role in helping students become the person that they most want to be – nothing could be more rewarding!
What’s the most challenging part of your job?
Knowing that everyone is not ready to make the changes that they need to make to start to feel better about themselves or their situation. It has taken me a long time to realize that I can’t help everybody and that for a small percentage of students things might need to get worse before they can get better. It can be hard to watch someone continue to make less than ideal decisions and not yet ready to start to learn from their mistakes.
What made you want to get into the field you’re in?
The honest answer to that question is more of a long chapter in a book than a paragraph or two in an online magazine article.
The snippet answer to that question is just the decisions I’ve made and the circumstances in my life over its entirety that have led me in this direction. I’ve always been able to relate well with people and am open minded and accepting in nature which lends itself to the profession. I realized that I needed a career helping people when I took a job at a group home before I ever finished my undergraduate degree and have been in the helping professions ever since. I understood quickly after starting at Crisis Services, my first job after I got my undergraduate degree, that I was good at quickly establishing rapport with people and was adept at crisis counseling.
When my time as a Supports Coordinator at Erie County Care Management was starting to run it’s course, I made the decision that I needed to further my education. I looked at every master’s degree offered at Gannon, Mercyhurst, Edinboro, Allegheny, and here and decided that college counseling was the best fit for me, my personality, and where my family was and is at this phase in our development.
Advice for students looking to go into the field:
1. Start in the helping professions right this minute. Both to build your resume and to make sure that this is your calling.
2. All of the good to great counselors I have met – the profession is their passion not just a job.
3. You need to have good work-to-life balance and need to quickly learn the skill of not taking others people’s problems home with you.
4. Never stop learning.
Advice for college students in general:
I think the advice that I have for students is common sense – but might take some years to realize.
The prescription for academic success isn’t all that difficult:
1. Go to all of your classes
2. Take great notes and pay 100 percent attention in class. Actually write down notes even if you are given the Power Point.
3. Review your notes within 24 hours of taking them. If you don’t understand something in those notes – figure it out then and there.
If you do that on a consistent basis – for the vast majority of classes you won’t score lower than a B.
For stability while you are here, realize that the only certainty in life is that we are all going to deal with change. The vast majority of us will have difficulty with that change and difficulties in general. I feel that the majority of issues that I see in the Personal Counseling Office can be more easily dealt with when people moderate and regulate.
By that I mean if you can regulate sleep (find your perfect amount of sleep and sim for that amount most every night attempt not to get too little or too much), get regular physical activity. Get your heart rate up 3-4 times a week doing an activity that you actually enjoy. Eat a moderately healthy diet – fruits veggies all that jazz. Moderate substances and pay specific attention to how they affect you personally. If you can do those four things, I find that you are more prepared to roll with the changes and difficulties that we all incur.
Thank you for the insightful article and all of your advice! HCXO