April 13, four graduates of the Elizabethtown College psychology program returned to give guidance to current psych students.
The Zoom panel was hosted by assistant professor of psychology at Etown and advisor to the College’s Psychology Club Dr. Elizabeth Dalton. The organization’s president, Madison Meiser; treasurer, Mackenzie Graf and secretary, Jennifer Mele, acted as co–hosts, shooting off questions to the alumni.
Here were those alums:
Ariel Davis-Robinson graduated in 2017 and works as an outpatient counsellor with Southwestern Pennsylvania Human Services.
Another panelist was Katlyn Wildberger. After graduating in 2013 with a double major in criminal justice and psychology, she went on to Loyola University in Maryland to get her masters in clinical psychology. She is currently a Crisis Intervention Team coordinator with police officers in Lancaster, Pa., in whose ranks is her husband.
She provides police with “training focused on how to handle those in crisis — how to deescalate those situations, safely.”
Wildberger is also a criminal justice planner with the Stepping Up Initiative, a position “aimed at lowering the mental health population in our county jail.”
Next was Michelle Lesinki, class of 1998 — the most experienced of the group. After graduating, she went on to earn her masters in school psychology from Eastern University. This led her to become the school psychologist at Fountain Hill Elementary School in the Bethlehem Area School District in Lehigh Valley, a position she has held for 21 years.
Lesinki explains her role, “I do the evaluations to determine if students are in need of specially designed instructions for IEPs (Individualized Education Programs).”
Finally, there was Yusuf Chaudry, who graduated in 2019 with a psychology major and cognitive science minor. He plans to go to graduate school but wants to build up some work experience first. That experience began with his time as a behavioral analyst, working with children with autism, ADHD and aggression disorders.
“I worked on that for about a year before I moved on,” Chaudry said. “I took a break because I was experiencing some burnout in that field.”
Now, he works only with adults, providing cognitive rehab therapy to people with brain trauma and similar ailments.
While Psychology Club panelists and other viewers asked lots of questions like how alumni chose their specialization, the one with the most brutal answers was about the effects of COVID on their work last year.
“It’s definitely been a challenge, particularly with building a therapeutic rapport,” Davis-Robinson said.
Her workplace has limited technology resources, so Zoom calls were out. She had to conduct her counselling over the phone.
“Our court system halted for a really long time,” Wildberger added.
Lesinki’s job was also thrown into chaos. “I work in a very low socioeconomic status community, so when shutdown happened in March for us, my role entirely shifted to more of a family support person.”
She could not evaluate students over Zoom because that data would not be reliable. Even if it was, many of her students would not have the internet stability for it.
While Chaudry worked as a behavioral analyst, the pandemic shrunk his patient base so much that, “I was predominantly working with one child most of last year.”
On a related note, Davis-Robinson offered a warning — “Burnout is real.”
“Whatever subset of psychology you work in, you’re going to take on other people’s problems sometime,” said Davis-Robinson.
Her advice for coping?
“Self-care. Self-care. Self-care. Self-care. I’ll say it a billion more times if I have to,” said Davis-Robinson.
Through email after the panel, Jenifer Mele said she found this advice particularly useful.
“Clinical psychology work can be particularly emotionally tolling, however, the importance of self-care in this field is only just beginning to be discussed,” Mele explained. “You cannot truly provide care to your clients if you are not taking care of yourself.”
Dalton was happy with how the panel turned out. In particular, she said, “One thing that’s cool but sometimes overwhelming about psychology is all the different subfields that are within it, which I think people got a bit of a flavor of with the panel.”
The professor believes that in addition to the panelists, 18 students and faculty attended the event. That’s a good group of people who hopefully found some insight into this intriguing profession.
