Welcome to City Counseling

My name is Ray Wong, and I’m a counselor at City College. I will be working with my counseling colleague, Kelli Turpin, on this blog. We will post a new blog at least once a week to provide you with timely information to help you as a student. How are we going to help? By covering topics such as motivation, time management, money for school, career exploration, job trends, the services we provide, how to access counseling, career research strategies, and others.

We’ll also bring you student success stories. We want to spotlight the students who are reaching their goals, how they’re doing it, what advice they might offer to help other students, and how they’re making a difference in the community. This last part is especially important. Education is effective to the degree that it helps a person contribute to others, to the community, to society.

“Well, hold on,” you might say. “I want an education to get into a good job so I can support myself and my family.” Fine. You won’t get an argument from me on that because we need to take care of ourselves and our families. But education can and should go beyond that. Education can help connect people, bridge differences to find commonalities, provide solutions to problems, and it can be the vehicle to propel us toward a cause we believe in. In fact, once we are successful and supporting ourselves and the people important to us, we have a moral obligation to help our community. Maybe through volunteering, mentoring someone who needs guidance, delivering meals to the homebound elderly, teaching educationally disadvantaged adults how to read, assisting a teacher in the classroom, or taking part in a community clean-up campaign. Education is a precious gift. Giving back to the community honors that gift.

This is one area in which you can help. We’re looking for stories that inspire. If you are a City College student who is making a difference, let us know what you’re doing. How are you making a positive impact in the community? Maybe we can spotlight your story in this blog. If you’re a successful student, share what’s been helpful to you with other students. What obstacles did you overcome to even get to college? How were you able to find your passion? How did you raise your GPA from 1.35 to 2.6? What has worked for you?

Also, tell us what you’d like to see in this blog. What topics interest you? What information do you need? Let us know so we can make this blog relevant for you. Thanks for joining our community.