My name is TongTong, I am an immigrant from China. I speak Chinese, but my first language is TaiShanese. I was born in a small village. It is a very nice place to live. Most of people are farmers, including my parents. I moved to New York City five years ago. I love it here, because it has a lot of opportunity and the most of important part is education. I am living in Brooklyn now. I am living with my parents in a small place, but i enjoy living with them. I went to High School, and then i graduated from it. I go to City Tech. I like this school so much, because it is close my home, I can take care of my parents easily. It also has a lot of amjor choices. The happiest thing is my best counselor is here. Even though she left for a while, I know she will come back soon.
Nursing was my first major in this college, I spent more than one and half years in this major, but I found i didn’t like it. Because I wanted to earn more money to support my family, when I was 18 years old, i began to support my family, for me, money is a very important thing. I also like mental help even more physical help. That is the reason i changed my first major to Human Services. My life always spends time to time to figure out what i want. But that is ok. At least, I found what i like to do. For example, my classmates may spend more that two or three hours, because it is language problems. Everyone’s situation is different. It cannot compare together.
I want to be a professinal in counseling. People always look down, if you are unprofessional. I want to use my knowledge and skills to help others. I also learn from people experiences. It makes our world wider. When I was in High School, I was working two jobs to support my family. I got a lot of helps from my school counselor. She was helping me a lot. I visited her twice a week. Sometimes, even more. She was very nice. At that time, my mother stayed in mental hosptial. She took care of me. I went to school, jobs and took care of my mother. I felt very tired. She always gave me some good advices. She talked to me” you take care of yourself at first, and then you can take care of your famuily”. i took off from more than one month to take care of my mother. I didn’t have enough money to buy metro-card. She spent her money to buy me a card. I felt so touch. When i go to college, I also get help from my college counselor. At that time, I was taking school reading test. I was got called ACT. I kept failing it, by one or two points. I felt so disappointed and she was sitting there and listening to me carefully. She inspired to me to keep going. Because of my family condition, it brings me a lot of pressures. My mother has very high blood pressure and depression. My father is unemployment, he has one leg disabled. They are collecting the bottles to help the family. And I have to work more than 40 hours a week and school at ahte same time. I felt extremely stressed. When i talked to her, I felt more relaxed. She always was there to support me. Even I am so busy, I still send her email. During these five years, I found I am getting a feedback to other people who need help.
Last year, I worked over 50 hours a week and as a full-time student. I felt so stressed, easy to cry, easy to nervous and over slept a lot. But still felt so tired. Then I realized I have some problems in my body. I went to do body check, It shows I am over stressed. I need to have a good rest, or vacation. Then I reduced my job hours to 40 hours . If I have time, I will do more happy things.
I have worked with a child who had mental illlness almost three years. He is shy, less talk. Sometimes, there is no talking during the whole day. I have a very high patience. When I faced him, he didn’t listen to me, even if you said a lot of things. When he was nervous, he abused himself. I felt so much empathy of him and his family. His family is very nice. They are having good hearts. I have a good understand to this situation, even though he hurt me sometimes, and he also cannot control himself. I continued to stay with him. Now, he talked more and learned more, I am happy. I helped him to build up the positive attitudes.
I would like to work for immigrants, specific, work for depression. Because I remember 3 years ago, my motehr got into hospital. She kept talking by herself. Then the doctor sent my mother into the top floor, the mental illness department. She stayed there over one month. I knew she is not crazy one, she was becoming to feel much better, and she felt so scared with other people. She was trying to leave there. But the doctor would not allow, because of the language problems.
I want to be a counselor in the future, especially, I want to work in mental health. Now, i need to study harder and get more experiences. Language is the big problem to foreign students. i will learn as much as i could. Life is not easy to everyone.
