Farewell
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After 19 years guiding students at Eastside Catholic School, Marjorie Hayton is retiring to embark on new adventures. We thank her for her dedication, service and leadership over the past two decades. R E FLE CT ION BY
M AR J O R I E HAYTO N
I
started at EC just weeks before 9/11 and am ending at EC during another stressful and unfortunate time—the COVID-19 pandemic. When I first started at the Newport Hills campus, counselors provided social-emotional, academic and college counseling before the model evolved for college counselors to specialize. It’s important for college counselors to not only be current on what’s happening in the world of college admissions, but also social/emotional school counseling in general. College counseling involves some of the same skills—encouraging students to identify their own feelings and facilitates deeper understanding and exploration of their strengths, weaknesses and goals as they apply to their future. An understanding of the bigger picture is critical—personal, academic and financial needs—all come into play. When my oldest daughter was a senior in high school, I became interested in the college admission scene and decided to
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start graduate school in school counseling. Graduate programs in school counseling do not actually provide training in college counseling, but I continued to learn everything I could on my own to fuel my interest. I graduated from the program the same weekend my oldest daughter graduated from Stanford and my youngest from Seattle Prep! Although the college application and admission process has always been stressful for students and their families, I have seen the level of stress increase over the past decade. Admission at many colleges has become more selective and because of that, students have felt the need to apply to a greater number of colleges. There are no shortage of stories in the press about highlyqualified students not being accepted anywhere, fueling the ramped-up anxiety. Students have felt the need to take more college-entrance exams, take more rigorous courses, add more extracurriculars—whatever they think it takes to get into college.
