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Episide 14: Shoud I Attend a Professional Conference for Counseling?
75 Plays1 year ago
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From Intern to Entrepreneur is the podcast for counseling graduate students (and other grad students in mental health fields) to start planning their journey to private practice while they're still in graduate school! Host, Cori White, started planning her journey while she was still in her graduate program and it paid off BIG to start planning EARLY.
In this episode, Cori talks about her experience at the Pennsylvania Counseling Association's Conference in Harrisburg and answers the question "Should grad students attend professional conferences while they are in grad school?"
Cori talks about the benefits to going to a professional counseling conference in grad school and how that can connect to becoming a better clinician and private practice owner in the future!
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Transcript
Corey's Journey and Early Planning
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This is from intern to entrepreneur, the podcast for counseling and therapy graduate students who want to start planning their journey to private practice while they're still in grad school. I'm your host Corey White. And within three years of graduating from my master's program, I had a six figure thriving private practice in large part because I started planning my path while I was still in grad school.
00:00:21
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This podcast is full of stories and information meant to give you ideas about how you can carve your own path to the therapy career that you want. Please
Licensure Laws and Professional Requirements
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note that when you're listening to this podcast, licensure laws and requirements vary from state to state. So check with your state board about what you can and can't do on your journey. And without further ado, enjoy this episode of From Intern to Entrepreneur.
00:00:47
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Oh hey there grad students. This is episode 14 of From Intern to Entrepreneur. And today
Conferences: Missed Opportunities and Regrets
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we're talking about professional conferences and asking the question, should you go to professional conferences while you're in grad school?
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And spoiler alert, I think the answer is yes. So this past weekend, I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania at the Pennsylvania Counseling Association's yearly conference. And it got me thinking that I never attended a professional conference while I was in grad school. And I started wondering why I didn't.
00:01:27
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And the reality is I just didn't think I realized it was important or I didn't know how it would help me clinically in my career. I didn't realize that it could help me as an entrepreneur to be going to professional conferences. I just didn't really see the benefits of it. And so I didn't go and that is something that I kind of regret as I think back on my grad school experience because I think that it really could have enhanced it in a lot of ways.
00:01:54
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So I thought why don't I tell you guys the three reasons that I think you should be going to professional conferences while you're still in grad school. But first a little bit about my experience at the conference. So this is my third
Presenting on Financial Wellness
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time attending the Pennsylvania Counseling Association State Conference. The first time was in 2019 when my supervisor encouraged me
00:02:15
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to present and I presented on private practice and wellness because the theme of the conference that year was wellness. I went last year when it was in Pittsburgh. I did not present that year. I kind of just wanted to go to see Pittsburgh. I'd been there a few times before but I just wanted to use it as a way to write off a business expense and get some CEs and
00:02:37
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meet people and be around counseling people in Pennsylvania. So I really enjoyed my time there. But this year I saw that the theme of the conference was around advocacy and I knew I wanted to present on counselors advocating for their financial wellness. And so I did a presentation this year on that and it was so amazing. The people that showed up to that presentation were
00:03:00
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so engaged and asking questions and sharing experiences. And I just think we can advocate for ourselves as a profession, as counselors better if we're talking about money. So I'll probably do a podcast episode in the future on advocating for our financial wellbeing, but we'll get there when we get there.
00:03:18
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In addition to me presenting, I also attended some amazing presentations myself that really taught me a lot about what's going on currently in our profession and different things I could do with clients. I learned
Unpaid Internships: Financial and Wellness Impacts
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all kinds of stuff. One of my favorites was a presentation that was called Overburden and Underpaid Advocacy for Counseling Interns. It was put on by two women, Emily Easter and Jocelyn Bylon Lopez.
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This presentation was the best and it addressed unpaid internships in our profession so perfectly that as I'm saying this out loud, I'm actually going to, when I'm done recording, reach out to Jocelyn who I have a little bit of contact with and say, hey, can you come on the podcast and talk about this? But it's just a topic in our profession that we just kind of look at as, oh, it's just the internships are unpaid. And we don't look at the impact of the unpaid internship, which really leaves
00:04:12
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our interns in a lot of trouble financially, wellness wise, showing up for their clients wise. And I really hope that that changes in our profession and that we're able to advocate for paid internships. And so that's going to be part of what I do in some of the work that I'm doing.
Networking at Conferences
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And in addition to presenting and to going to presentations, I also just had a great time networking and connecting with other counselors. I had such a fun time at this conference. I used to think that conferences were like going to be stuffy and boring. This was before I went to any of them. So total judgment, total assumptions. I just thought they were going to be like boring. And if I want to learn, I could just learn on my own or I can go back to take a grad class or I can go take an online CE. And what I've realized is that going to a conference is about learning.
00:05:00
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but it's about so much more and so you might use your experience at a weekend long conference to kind of rest and relax go learn some things enjoy yourself at a hotel or you might use your time at the conference to hang out with counselors and find a karaoke bar and stay there way too late um you know you can use your imagination as to which one might have happened with me but
00:05:23
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Conferences can be really cool, fun, and they can be a lot of what it is that you need that you're not able to get in other spheres of your life. So, let's jump in though to the three reasons that I think grad students should be attending professional conferences while they're still in grad school.
Exploring Niche Topics
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Reason number one, when you go to conferences,
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There are presentations on so many different topics that you're not going to get access to in grad school. Some of them you might have access to in grad school, but the topics are so specific that it allows you the opportunity to learn about different things that you might be interested in without paying for a full class or learn about things that you might be interested in that your grad program doesn't offer a class into.
00:06:13
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I found it so helpful in my clinical practice to be able to go to these presentations that are about things that I've never learned about, didn't even realize I had an interest in, and I go and hear people talk about them. These are people that are passionate about it. Of course they're passionate about it. They've created a presentation and they've paid money to show up to a conference to present on it. These people are passionate about the topics that they're talking about, and so to learn from them
00:06:36
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is a really unique experience and it just offers you a level of clinical knowledge that you might not be getting in your graduate program. You just get access to so much different information.
00:06:49
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And when you're thinking about what you want to do in your future, I find that it can be really helpful to expose yourself in little bits and pieces to topics that you might be interested in learning more about. I look at it as like planting seeds. So you go to this topic, you go to this presentation topic that's on something very kind of niche and specific. And by attending it, you're planting a seed.
00:07:13
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about whether or not you want to do it in the future and maybe that seed grows or maybe it's one of the seeds that doesn't make it. But either way you didn't buy a thousand dollar palm tree and plant it and hope that it survives in winter. You tested a little bit about, hey, am I interested in this? Do I want to learn more about this? Is the knowledge I got from this enough to help me in my practice?
00:07:36
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is the knowledge that I got from this enough to assure me that this is not really the work that I want to be doing. You get to dip your toes a little bit into new topics. And so I think that's so important to do while you're still in grad school because it'll help you formulate how you want more of the rest of your career to go. So that's number one.
00:07:57
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Number two is that if you want to be in private practice one day, it will really help you in honing entrepreneurial skills. What I mean
Networking for Entrepreneurship
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by that is so much of being a business owner and being an entrepreneur is about connections and who you know, and who you know that will send you referrals, who you know that knows the thing that you don't know that much about, but you need to know a little bit more about it in a pinch. And so going to conferences like this,
00:08:25
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get you in contact with people that are in your field that you otherwise would not have contact with. You get to form connections with people that you wouldn't meet in your town or your county or in your job setting or in your private practice if that's where you end up one day. It just connects you with so many people that have skill sets that will be able to benefit you. And somebody, when I was at the conference this weekend, brought up like, it would be fun to do speed dating.
00:08:55
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at these conferences and I think that's such a good idea where you kind of sit down and you get this opportunity to go, hi, tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. Okay, great. Thanks. And then you move on and you move on and the people that resonated with you, the people that you want to connect with, then you can go and connect with them. So I hope somebody does that in the future because it's such a fun idea. But even if they don't do that, every time that I go to a conference, I have in my head, I'm going here to meet people. I'm going here to see
00:09:25
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who I don't know, but I want to know who might want to know things for me, just trying to form different reciprocal relationships. And I'll say that some of my favorite connections have been born out of going to conferences when I was at the ACA conference last year in
00:09:43
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Oh, it was in Toronto. I ended up getting connected with some friends from Oklahoma and a counselor that is going through a PhD program in New York. I don't know anybody from Oklahoma. How would I have ever met someone from Oklahoma if I didn't go to Oklahoma? But I went to Toronto and I met these people and next year I'm planning to present at the Oklahoma State Conference if everything goes as planned because I have those connections there.
00:10:12
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I met people this past weekend that I'm hoping I'll form long relationships with. And I'm actually going to sit down today and write a couple emails expressing gratitude that I did meet them in hopes that I will be able to foster a relationship. And these are people within my state. So these are people that might refer to me one day. These are people that might want to learn something from me one day. These are people that I can refer to. These are people that
00:10:37
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I might learn something from and so it's just a really rich way of getting used to going to conferences meeting people that are counselors like you and forming like I said already reciprocal relationships the other thing to really be mindful about with this is that what you'll find as you become a counselor is that
00:10:58
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We're a unique breed and it can be difficult, the more entrenched you get into counseling life, to find people that understand what it's like to be a counselor. So I found it really rewarding to create circles of counselors that understand what it's like to be one. And that may or may not be something that you can vibe with right now, but I promise you that you will be very grateful in your future to have counseling friends, counselor friends.
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in your circles. And the third
Encouraging Student Presentations
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reason to go to conferences while you're still in grad school is it gives you the opportunity to take risks. If you want to be an entrepreneur one day, you better get real comfortable with taking risks because if you don't, it's going to be really hard for you to create a successful business because I feel like everything that I'm doing is taking a risk in this business. And what I mean by it allows you now to be able to take a risk is
00:11:56
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Go to a conference.
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and present at one. You can go to a conference as a student and have one of the people on the faculty at your school co-present with you on a topic and it will get you used to talking in front of people, being an expert in something, sharing your ideas with other clinicians. That's a really scary thing. And if you do it for the first time under the guidance of
00:12:27
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professors at your school you're gonna feel supported in a way that if you tried to do it 10 years into your career you're not gonna feel so supported and I don't know maybe you'd be fine doing it but take advantage of having support take advantage of
00:12:42
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getting someone to support you who's been to conferences before, who know what presentations look like. I remember that was one of my biggest hang-ups when my supervisor suggested I present, is I was like, I don't even know what it's like to be at one. I don't know what to expect. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. How's all I'm supposed to be? What am I supposed to say? I didn't know anything.
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but I had the support to ask someone who knew. He was able to mentor me in a way where I still was very nervous, but I felt comfortable and I felt supported. So this gives you the opportunity to practice risk-taking, to practice your skills speaking about counseling, and to practice being outside of your comfort zone.
00:13:22
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in a way that will set you up really well as an entrepreneur but also just as a clinician who maybe wants to push the boundaries of just one-on-one clinical work. This will set you up to learn how to do public speaking events, to learn to be interviewed on podcasts, to teach workshops, to teach classes maybe one day.
00:13:42
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It's going to set the stage for you to form a foundation of feeling comfortable doing some of these different things. So I highly recommend that if you're in grad school right now, start thinking about what's a topic that I might want to present on or who's a professor I have that might want to help me in presenting a topic. And the reason I
00:14:06
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I'm pretty sure you'd have to check on this. I'm not the expert on this specifically. But I think that if you're a student that presents, you need to have a faculty member with you. And that also might change state by state or conference by conference. So look into that if you're interested in that. And yeah, get your ass in front of some people talking about some stuff that feels important to you and take that risk. It will benefit you in the long term.
Reflecting on Missed Connections
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So I hope that in listening to this, you have a little bit of an understanding of how attending professional conferences in counseling specifically could help your career in the long term. I really, I know I've already said this, but I really wish I could go back in time and attend one in my graduate program. I think that the connections that I would have found
00:14:54
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through going through it while I was in my grad program would have been profound. I think the opportunity to learn networking sooner would have sped up a lot of my process and I hope that you recognize there's so much to be learned in our profession that are outside of your graduate programs. There's so many wonderful people in this profession that know so much that find ways to learn from them.
Promoting the Therapist Goal Planner 2024
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As we're wrapping up today's podcast, I want to remind you that if you're interested in my 2024 Therapist Goal Planner, specifically for grad students, you can visit my website, www.fromintern2entrepreneur to get information on when that's being released. If you're a planner, you want this. And if you're someone that needs to find out how to make your life work and make your mental health a priority in 2024,
00:15:52
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then you're going to want to get information about this. Visit the website and if you like this podcast, please share it with your friends. There's about 50 people listening to each episode at this point and it's just going to get better and better if I get more and more feedback from other people that are in our graduate programs that can help me create a show that is really in alignment with what y'all need to hear right now.
00:16:21
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Wherever you are, I hope that you're having a fabulous day and I'll catch you on the next episode.
00:16:31
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I hope that you loved this episode of From Intern to Entrepreneur. And if you want to learn more about what we talked about, check out the show notes. If you love this podcast and you want to support me and continuing to create content for entrepreneurs, then please share this with a friend, a grad student who you think might want their own private practice one day, and also like, subscribe, and review this podcast wherever you're listening to it.