I have been extremely fortunate to be living the American dream. I am pursuing my career as human services major at the New York City College of Technology.

I am currently working at Victoria’s Secret in Queens Center Mall. I moved to New York from the place I was born, Medellin, Colombia, when I was only eight years old with my family. I am currently living in Queens, New York in the neighborhood of College Point, which is a very nice place. I live with my parents and have a big brother who lives a couple of blocks away from me with his fiancée. I am an animal lover and a people person.

I decided to pursue a career in the Human Services field and become a HUS worker in the future because of the gratification that I feel when I help people. I feel an immense sense of fulfillment when I change a person’s life or even when I make someone smile. For example, I was a home aid for an elderly woman for about three years. Every instant that I helped her and she genuinely thanked me for it gave me a profound feeling of gratification. Every time we talked and I made her laugh or smile gave me a sense of fulfillment and gratification as well. I also feel much better about myself when I help people and better their lives, I feel like it makes me a better person. All the good and bad experiences that I am going to encounter with a variety of clients are going to shape me into a better person in the long run.

I believe that I have certain advantageous professional and personal traits that will make me an effective human service worker. In the professional aspect I am bilingual. I speak English and Spanish. The fact that I am bilingual is advantageous to do so, because I can help more than one population and have more job opportunities. I also have experience in the customer service field. Having experience in the customer service field is also a great importance to human services because I know how to approach and talk to people to make them feel comfortable and get along with them. Personally, I am patient and organized, which are two important individual traits to have in human services. Having patience is critical because there are clients that do not want to be helped or who don’t cooperate with you and you must be patient. Being organized is always a good thing. It provides stability and coordination in your life as well as in your career, which is advantageous in human services.

One of my professional goals is to work with the youth, even though I don’t have a high expertise level working with the population is my dream. I specifically want to work with teens that are victims of sexual or domestic abuse. I believe that the youth is the population that needs the most guidance on the right path to a better life. Youth are intriguing to me because according to Erik Erikson it is the stage in which they develop an identity. An identity is crucial in the long run, it determines the life you will live in the future and a lot of youth need help in developing the right identity. Working with youth might also be challenging because they are stubborn, most have a strong attitude, and don’t like being helped because they think they know it all. In order to successfully help the young people I must do a lot of research on this population and learn skills on the approaches I should take to help guide them. As of now, I too am young and know how to talk to the youth and get them to cooperate to help that population achieve a successfully self-sufficient lifestyle.

In the next ten years I envision myself with a PhD in counseling or social work. There might be a high possibility that I will still be in the process of obtaining a PhD. I would like to own my own counseling and therapist office and work for myself along with other counselors and therapists. I would like my office to focus on youth counseling for sexual abused or domestic abused victims. I would expect my career to be quite successful. I envision myself working in different agencies that help youths.

In conclusion, I’m extremely grateful to have the opportunity to pursue my career. I love the human services field and I intend to be successful in this career path. The love I have for helping people only motivates me t to be successful. I want to learn many skills and put the skills that I already obtained in practice. I envision myself helping a lot of families and changing the lives of many young adults.