It’s 6:00 AM and my alarm starts beeping. I think to myself, “What am I getting into?” So begins the first day of my internship at Watertown High School. It has been 2 months since I started my 3-day a week internship at WHS and while I will never enjoy hearing my alarm clock go off before the sun is up, I do look forward to my internship each day.

My name is Adrienne Eaton and I am in my second year of the combined M. Ed School Counseling  and College Admissions Counseling Certificate Program here at Suffolk. My coursework last year and over the summer provided me with a great foundation for the work I am now doing in my internship.  I have been pleased to see my coursework come to life this year – from counseling theories to adolescent development, from group guidance to college counseling, my internship is exposing me to the issues, programs and responsibilities I learned about last year and continue to learn about this fall.

For example, fall in a school counseling department is filled with schedule changes, new student registrations and college counseling. Over the summer, as part of the College Admissions Counseling Certificate coursework, I took a course on the Fundamentals of College Admissions Counseling. In this course, we covered everything from searching for colleges to financial aid to the transition to college. As I begin to work with students who plan to go to college next year, I find that the information I learned over the summer is invaluable to the work I am doing in these senior meetings. Another summer course for the certificate required me to visit 10 different colleges or universities to learn more about the school, their admissions policies, their support services and their diversity programming. This required meeting with representatives from the different offices and gave me a glimpse at what these ten schools are all about. Certainly as a beginning school counselor the challenge will be knowing what schools are known for what programs and who might fit in there, but the course gave me a good place to start and some great contacts in the higher education world.

While my internship is giving me the hands on experience I need to be a school counselor, my coursework at Suffolk has given me a great foundation and prepared me well for my internship and responsibilities there.