Reflective Essay On Human Services

My main concentration right now in my life is my career in Human Services. The education that I am receiving at California State University Dominguez Hills has definitely changed the way I think in regards to people in the society and it has also giving me a background of problems I will run into and what I can do to solve it. I have learned that helping people will never be an easy job and that it can be stressful and frustrating. I will always remember to be patient, respectful, genuine, honest, and maintain myself neutral. My goal is to help as many people as I can and make an impact in their life and get them the help they need. I think it’s important to respect and understand other people point of view especially if they are different than yours. I believe that understanding where our clients come from will help us understand them and get them the help they need. I believe in self-determination and helpers should always remember that it’s our clients decisions what they want in life and we can’t force them to change. My goal for next year is to graduate and get my Bachelor degree. My education is important and I take every experience and opportunity to learn and grow into my career.
My first internship was at 1736 Family Crisis which is a shelter for domestic violence
survivors. This internship gave me 40 hours of domestic violence training and it helped me understand why some of this victims of domestic violence stay with their batterers it also helped me understand why they go back to them. This internship gave me hand on experience and helped me developed communication skills and how to be approachable to this women and their children. I noticed that some of these children need a lot of therapy do to the traumatic experience they went through. It’s also sad when some these mothers would tell me that their children wake up at the middle of the night crying and not being able to sleep. I enjoyed doing my internship at 1736 Family Crisis because I was also able to interact with these women and their children and they got to share their story with me that up until this day I wonder what it would be of them and their children. My second and last internship is at Miller Children Hospital in Long Beach. I really love what this hospital provides for their patients and family. This internship has allowed me to interact with different people every day and I love the fact that I am feeling more comfortable with different people and I am able to have a conversation with them. Seeing some of this patients very ill and seeing how they are fighting to get healthy and how they cope with illness and how they are couldn’t be any more thankful to have had the opportunity the get to know these patients. It has made me as a person value what I have in life, and I can say that this career will definitely help me become a better person.
Every, internship offered me new opportunities to grow and learn something new about myself and has reassured me that I do want to be in this career. Now, that my last internship is coming to an end. I plan in continue attending Miller and just getting more practice and knowledge. My goal is that I will contact different agencies and be a volunteer so I can get more hands on experience and knowledge with different departments of the Human services. As of now I do want to work with family and children, but I also want to discover if there is something else I can be passionate about. By having different backgrounds in the human services career will definitely prepare me for the future job I want to purse.
At Miller we have children life specialist, I am considering that I might want to get certified as well so I can have a background on children, or have a double major in child development. I believe that the more certifications I can get it will help me become more successful in my career. After I graduate from Dominguez I have giving it a lot of thought and I will go for my Masters. I really want to attend USC and do my masters there the Human services career is very unique in its ways and has a lot of different people that you will see and help that come from different parts of the world and have their own beliefs, religion, and aspects of what life means to them. I would definitely like to educate myself more on the different cultures and also learn from people I meet and expand my knowledge on culture.
Being in this career we will have to deal with different type of people and different type of problems. In one of my classes I remember the professor asking what is the population that you would not want to work with. or would have difficulty in helping them. I remember sitting in class and thinking to myself I definitely don’t want to help gangsters, and people who are addicted to drugs. Because I did not understand why people do or act the way they do. I did not understand their motives. After learning more in regards to this population of people I understand a little more why they do the things they do. It was hard for me to understand it because I never grew up around with that type of population or environment. Setting my values aside and maintaining my- self as neutral as I can when it comes to this population I would definitely challenge my- self and would like to learn more in regard to this population and take this as a challenge and as a new learning experience.
Being in the Human service career I believe that every day is an opportunity to learn and grow.
This career is not for everyone and we should always remember to take care of ourselves first and learn more about our own struggles and make sure that our values, attitudes and beliefs don’t interfere when we are helping other people. I believe that nobody is perfect and we learn through new experiences. I definitely want to make a difference in someone life. I am ready for the challenges that I will have to face working with new people and I am excited and can’t wait to begin different journeys with my clients and knowing that change can happen over time and being patient is the
key.