This blog post was written by Teresa Vandal, a Master of Science in Psychology alumna from Divine Mercy University.
An amazing thing has happened to me recently, something just 10 years ago I was not sure I would ever get to do. I finished my Master’s Degree. What is really amazing is that I was blessed to be able to attend the university I did. Why was I so blessed? You see, the university I attended, if put up against such universities as Harvard or Yale might be still considered fledgling. It is a university that has been around nearly 20 years. It is quite the innovator though because it deals with such a novel concept in that it reintroduces the dignity of the human person in such topics as Psychology and Counseling.
Unlike the more traditional forms of Psychology and Counseling that deals only with fixing what might be broken in a human soul, this university believes in the Judeo-Catholic-Christian view of the person as a whole, and so teaches the idea of helping the person to heal through building their whole life back up and thus helping them to not just fix the problems, but to actually flourish. They teach you to take into consideration the potential client’s day to day living, their family, their culture, their spirituality as well as their possible spiritual leader, but most importantly they teach you to help the client understand what they might need help with by actually looking deeply and without fear, at who they really are. There are many thought-provoking projects, many discussions on multitudes of topics, a lot of reading assignments and papers, and after each class you may tend to feel brain-fried, but you always feel it was all worth every brain cell if needed.
The university also has faculty and staff – from Father Charles Sikorsky, LC, JD, JCL, President of the university, to each and every professor – who truly care about the success of the students. As a result, students tend to not only find instruction on how to help their clients flourish, but also how to flourish themselves. I look back over the past two years as I worked to finish my M.S. in Psychology and I am amazed about how much change occurred in me; a change that had me reach and grow far more than I could ever have imagined, and that not only gives me the courage, but the desire to want to go out into the world, and with God’s help, hopefully make a difference in others’ lives. Thank you DMU! I will be forever grateful.