My name is Divian Rodriguez. I was born December 01, 1991 in Santiago Rodriguez, Dominican Republic. I was raised there until I was eighteen years old. On December of 2008 my life changed radically and not in my favor. My mother, my sister and I started a new life in New York City. Once in USA I had to restart my high school year at the Manhattan Bridges High School because the credits I earned in the high school I attended in the Dominican Republic were not transferable. Now I am through with that entire struggle and I have made it into college. I am now at the New York City College of Technology where I am majoring an associates in Human Services. Here I will talk more about myself and why I chose this mayor.
My reason for choosing to be a Human Services worker besides the will of helping others is because of personal experience. As I mentioned earlier, my life had a significant change and it was so difficult for me to adapt to the changes. I didn’t own anything, I was not more rich or poor than I am now, I didn’t have any luxury, I didn’t have anything but I had it all. I had a stable place that I could call my home, with my family. I was around the ones I love, my grandmothers and my grandfather, my father, basically all my family and my friends. I felt the cozy warmth of being around people that love unconditionally. Unfortunately I cannot express the same way about the United States. I barely have family here and obviously I didn’t have any friends. Everyone seems to be so cold hearted and minds their own business and no one is interested in the neighbor’s well-being but of its own.  I fell into a big depression, and I started to recognize the effects when I entered college. I had lost interest in everything that once mattered to me. I was failing all my grades and my GPA dropped so low that I was put on academic probation. That is when I decided to seek for counseling in the school’s counseling center. It called my attention how understanding was the counselor. She never judged my feelings or thoughts; she made me feel as if she understood perfectly what I was going through and helped me get professional help. This experience has helped me adapt to my new environment and grow an interest in this counseling field. I know that someday I will also make someone else feel that not everything is lost, that there will always be something we all must keep fighting for.
I believe everyone has a strength that can help them personally to achieve anything they desire. About myself I am a very calm person, patient, respectful, a good listener, and I like to make others feel comfortable with my presence. I believe these qualities are going to help me achieve my goal in becoming a Human Services worker. One reason is because as human services professional being patient, respectful and a good listener is fundamental. These are qualities than I don’t have to try to exercise, they come out naturally. The values instilled in me from my family will help me go a long way.  A professional strength I have is the ability to communicate with others in a clear way. This strength I acquired with my job experiences, it was required to communicate clear and efficiently. I developed that skill because I’ve never been a person who felt comfortable speaking. But I was able to benefit from my job experience and apply what I’ve learned to my future career.
The client population I would like to work with is elders. When I see elders I think of my grandmother how she can be one of them and that there is someone is the community that cares about their well-being. I can learn so much from the elders. Because they have lived longer than me there are life lessons they can teach me that I still have to go through. The human being never finishes learning and I can learn from the elders and they can learn from me. The reason I would like to help them is because as they age society loses respect towards them. This can make them feel worthless at times. They might sometimes feel discriminated, that their rights are being violated and that their voice is not being herd. Elders as well as children have a hard time expressing how they feel, sometimes we must identify what problem is affecting them and find out a plan to help them cope with the situation or find the solution. It is necessary to be very patient when treating elders because it is not in the humans will to age; therefore, some elders may be sensitive at the fact that they are aging and probably close to end their life on earth. They must be treated in a way they won’t feel inferior or worthless but powerful. Elders are a very important part of the population and they do not deserve to be put on a side.
When I imagine myself working as a human services professional I feel that at the beginning I will struggle a little, like any job you don’t get there knowing everything. All I have studied until now are theories of what to do in each situation, but when I start practicing what I studied, what I have learned is going to be but to test. I will actually learn how to do my job. I can imagine myself in an agency having a session with and elder asking him or her how they feel, talking about their experiences, supplying them with what they need. An important facet of my job that I envision myself doing is organizing events, activities, and trips for the elders, making them feel involved in their community. I would also invite other counselors, doctors, nutritionists, young people, human service and many other professionals to visit the elders and give a little speech of any topic. For example, “how to conserve our planet”, “the importance of a healthy and balances diet”, “what others are doing to help thing particular population”?   I can also envision myself attending speeches, in-services, reading journals to be up to date with the new changes treatments. I don’t expect it to be a dreamy job always happy, because there is no job like that, and if I think that way I will never look at the positive side of all I will be doing, and I will feel that my job is the worst ever. The elders need someone to advocate for their rights, they don’t deserve to be forgotten.
I had a different point of view about life before I came into the United States. The experience of going through all those changes helped me find what I will enjoy doing.  I hope to complete my career I know it will be an everyday challenge, but I am committed and I know that what I will be doing brings smiles, happiness, and better life to those I help. That would be a huge reward to see how the lives of others change into a positive environment.
