Get to Know the Counseling Center

Get to know your counselors

The Springfield College Counseling Center is full of professionals who are dedicated and passionate about helping students get through everyday struggles.

__ By Collin Atwood __ @collinatwood17

The life of a college student is stressful enough, but there is no doubt that everyone’s stress levels have gone up since March of 2020. College students, especially, have had to deal with numerous changes in their lives. Online learning, quarantine housing and weekly testing were all new aspects to college that nobody was prepared for.

Now that the college lifestyle is somewhat normal again, people are still getting used to the intensity and speed of a normal routine. It’s important that these students have someone to go to when they feel like the stress of college is just too much.

Fortunately for the Springfield College community, the Counseling Center on campus is full of counselors who are eager to assist students in processing their everyday problems.

“To have someone come into my office and to talk about the most intimate parts of their life and to be privileged to be a part of that is pretty incredible,” said Paige Getchell, a psychologist at the Springfield College Counseling Center.

It didn’t take long for Getchell to realize that she wanted to be a counselor, and help people through their problems. Sharing stories has always been a big part of her family culture. Through those years of sharing and listening to stories, Getchell’s love grew for hearing how people’s life experiences have affected them.

“I always really just enjoyed talking to people and was really interested in people’s stories,” said Getchell. “Everyone has a very unique, interesting story, and different perspective.”

This passion for listening to others talk about their life led Getchell to attend Roanoke College where she majored in psychology and minored in sociology. She attended graduate school at Loyola University and that’s where her specific interest in counseling adults

(Photo courtesy of the Springfield College Counseling Center)

originated.

“While I was there, I really knew that I wanted to work with adults,” Gretchell said. “I had experience working at some outpatient settings, working with different communities [like] the LGBTQ+ community - I worked with individuals who were diagnosed with HIV or facing economic oppression.”

After completing her internship and postdoctoral at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, she was offered a job at Springfield College. It was the tight-knit community and amazing staff at Springfield that interested Getchell. The small community at Springfield makes it easier for her to connect with the students and work with them in a long-term way.

“There’s just a sense of community here and everyone... we’re all very different, but there’s a sense of family that was really welcoming,” she said.

Family is exactly what gets Getchell through her tough days. After a long day of helping students through the problems that life brings, she could use a little therapeutic time herself. When she’s not at work, she loves spending time with her daughter and dog named Bubba.

In her six years at Springfield, Getchell has been a tremendous resource for many students on campus. Her counseling and pure joy in helping others has been the therapy that

the community needs.

Another counselor who has proved herself as a positive resource to many is Jennifer Dashiell-Shoffner. Other than a counselor, Dashiell-Shoffner is a professor and coordinator for the rehab studies program at Springfield College.

Dashiell-Shoffner has been at Springfield since the fall semester of 2020, and she was drawn here after meeting the faculty and realizing how genuine and “real” they were. She values a workplace where people can show up as themselves and not be afraid to be who they are.

“They were very authentic, very transparent...it felt very real and it was a place [where] I realized I can work in this department and be me,” Dashiell-Shoffner said.

Those qualities were important to her because prior to Springfield, she studied and worked at North Carolina A&T State University which is a public, historically Black university. The switch from a public all-Black school to a private, predominately-white college, was terrifying.

“I was worried about how I would be perceived in general by the students overall, because I was at a college where I wasn’t different.”

Dashiell-Shoffner came into Springfield very guarded because she was worried that as a Black female staff member, she would run into a scenario where a student would mistreat her. As the semester progressed, she soon realized that the students at Springfield were not the type to discriminate against anyone.

“The guard I came in with, I realized I didn’t need it. I got ready for something that I thought was going to happen and it never happened,” Dashiell-Shoffner said.

During her time as a student in North Carolina, Dashiell-Shoffner majored in psychology and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree. She continued her studies at Radford University because she was unsure about what she wanted to do for a career.

While she was there, she earned her Master’s degree in industrial/ organizational psychology before returning to teach and study at her alma mater in North Carolina A&T. While Dashiell-Shoffner was teaching there, she was also earning her Master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling.

It wasn’t until she went for her PhD in rehabilitation counseling and rehabilitation counselor education that Dashiell-Shoffner realized she had a passion for counseling. The best way for her to pursue this passion without giving up her love for teaching was to be a part-time counselor, and that’s exactly what she did.

After being employed as a professor at Springfield College, Dashiell-Shoffner found herself reading an article in The Springfield Student about the list of demands made by social justice organizations in Sept. 2020.

“I saw what the Black student organizations were asking for and one of them was more counselors of color in the counseling center… so I called the director and said ‘Hey, do you still need counselors of color?’” Dashiell-Shoffner said.

She was more than qualified and from there, Dashiell-Shoffner became a part-time counselor. She’s now available at the Counseling Center one day a week for about four hours.

Dashiell-Shoffner’s favorite thing about counseling is helping students find the solutions to their problems on their own. She describes it as “seeing the lightbulb turn on.”

“That’s the best part because then I know we’re doing the work,” she said.

Brian Krylowicz, Director of the Counseling Center, is another person that has a passion for helping students through their four years of college. Krylowicz has held his role as Director since he came to Springfield in 2012.

Krylowicz graduated from Whittier College

Paige Getchell. (Photo courtesy of the Springfield College Counseling Center)

Counselors

continued from Page 9 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1990. His interest in psychology stemmed from a sports psychology class he took in his junior year of college.

In his journey of becoming a sports psychologist, Krylowicz attended Texas Tech University where he ultimately would earn his Master’s and Doctoral degrees in counseling psychology. While he was in the program, he was responsible for working at the university’s counseling center. Although he was unfamiliar with the setting, the more he worked there the more he thought that being a counselor is a career that he would enjoy.

“I was sent over to go work at the counseling center,” Krylowicz said. “I got some good guidance and away my career went.”

Working in counseling at Texas Tech started a college counseling journey for Krylowicz. He has never been a counselor outside of the college setting – and that’s exactly how he likes it.

“As a therapist you want to work with people that have insight and you want to have people that are looking to change their lives,” he said. “College working is just awesome.”

Luckily for Springfield, after multiple stops at other colleges, Krylowicz brought himself over to the East Coast for the first time ever to join the counseling center on Alden Street.

“When I interviewed here, everybody seemed to care about the students, and that was a vibe you don’t get at every college,” Krylowicz said.

That is exactly what Krylowicz is about. All he wants is to see people on campus smiling and laughing, even through the tough times.

“My favorite part is watching people graduate,” Krylowicz said. “I had a great time in college, so part of the reason I like working at the counseling center is I want to make sure as many people as I can also have a great time in college.”

The counseling center at Springfield is a valuable resource filled with caring people who want to see the students on campus succeed. Students are encouraged to take advantage of this resource and visit springfield.edu/ student-life/counseling-center for more information.

Brian Krylowicz.(Photo courtesy of the Springfield College Counseling Center)

Arruda

continued from Page 3 found myself sleeping through my alarms – like actually, I couldn’t wake up. One time I woke up at 4 in the morning and just stayed up because I was afraid of missing another class and affecting my grade.

When I visited my professor outside of their office, they understood. They filled me in on what I’d missed and helped me understand assignments that were upcoming.

The sudden change of pace has made us all remarkably susceptible to burnout at a much faster rate. How three assignments felt in the past, one feels now. The prospect of searching and applying for fulltime jobs, entering the real world and leaving the Springfield College bubble behind is daunting – to say the least.

I have had a wonderful four years here – despite the fact that the pandemic hit in the spring of my sophomore year, and every day since has been full of lost opportunities and experiences.

There are so many people, especially at Springfield College, who are here to help us out. There is the Academic Success Center, the Counseling Center, clubs, our professors and friends who are committed to helping us get through this.

Sure we have seen the light at the end of the pandemic-infested tunnel before – multiple times, actually – but it is still so far away.

Now, opportunities are beginning to come back again. We are nearing the end of a full fall sports season, approaching the winter when we will again welcome the premier high school basketball showcase in the region and hopefully #shakeblake a few more times.

Eventually we will be able to drag ourselves to that light at the end of the tunnel.

Beckford: If we don’t talk about it, we’ll continue to suffer

When I sat down to begin writing this piece, I asked one of my brothers for his opinion on the experience of Black people and mental health services; he promptly responded that they were non-existent. He was, of course, being hyperbolic. We have both benefitted, in some manner, from mental health services and are fortunate to have had access to not only that kind of care but the kind of attitudes that encourage the pursuit of those services. But his answer, as joking and exaggerated as it was, did not descend from thin air. One tired joke (tired, though one intuits that the joke is lifted from the common and personal experiences of many) is the idea that therapy is the trifle of white people. Everyone else is to toughen up or manage in some other manner, such as the purported manner in which one is told that their mother or father, or some other relative, has managed to get by in life. The more dysfunctional they are, the better they have proved themselves as resilient—and without the help of a shrink. Although, if I now recall my experience in public school, many of my peers, Black or not, have confided that the disapproval of their parents prevented them from seeking therapy or some other form of mental health service. None of us were particularly wealthy, which is to say we each represented some gradation of working-class American, or the children of working-class Americans, who couldn’t afford therapy, anyways, if we wanted to go or our parents would let us. So it might be said that therapy is also the trifle of the comfortably well-to-do. Or perhaps of the decidedly middle-aged, too. If you can count your age on your fingers and toes, you have probably been told (or know someone who has been told) that you are too young for your struggles to be quite so agonizing. After all, what bills do you pay? And, to be fair, the edicts of the naysayers comply perfectly well, rather too much so, with the images and understanding of mental health services prevalent in our culture (that is, the American culture). From Freud to present, the image of psychotherapy has been that of the white and middle-aged and well-to-do. And, even then, the patients of Freud were European or cosmopolitan, artists and poets, Old Money, people whose inner dramas were supposed to be of a different order. By the mid-century, in America, one could be all that but scandalized all the more for it (i.e., Robert Lowell). At this point, it seems mental health services are for no one, a frightening thought especially if one has been tracking the pernicious unaccounted for increase of rates of mental illness and loneliness in America; and it is a distressing thought when you remember the casualties inflicted therein. College might be the first place where many young Americans find themselves with access to mental health services and even encouraged to take advantage of them. But what is the student to do who suffers for it? In her essay, “Yale Will Not Save You,” Esmé Weijun Wang recounts and reflects on the disappointing, often infuriating, actions of Yale University regarding the mental health of its student body and local population. And this, by no means, is a problem especial to Yale. In one case, Michelle Hammer, a young woman who attended a different university, found herself in crisis; the actions of the university police department found her all but under the barrel of a gun—beaten, stepped on, pepper sprayed, handcuffed, and dropped off at a hospital. This all sounds discouraging, even pessimistic, I know, but I say it to clarify—so that we are all vaguely on the same page—what broader and finer problems are facing us when we speak so lightly of mental health and take for granted the privilege of successfully getting that help. If we don’t have these conversations, which cannot help but be trying and uncomfortable for all parties, you and I will continue to suffer unnecessarily, and we will be counted lucky for our still being able to talk about it.

__ By Rowan BeckfoRd __ Guest Contributor

Rowan Beckford. (Photo courtesy of the Alden Street Review)

Choate: ‘It’s okay not to be okay’

The Springfield Student’s Special Projects Editor, Hayden Choate, weighs in on the stigma of being in an unwell state of mind, and how people in sports are overcoming it.

__ By Hayden CHoate __ @ChoateHayden

When talking about our mental health, there is one simple phrase that is extremely important for our entire human population to know.

Five words that should not only be spread by word of mouth but plastered on billboards everywhere.

“It’s okay to not be okay.”

The small phrase has a lot of meaning behind it. Just because you are not doing well doesn’t mean you have to act like everything is fine because it is wrong to not feel good mentally.

Admitting that something is wrong is always the first step in fixing whatever the issue is. This is not just the case with just mental health but with everything in life.

The phrase has become more commonly known over the last few years because not only are people prioritizing the importance of mental health but trying to get rid of the stigma surrounding mental health in general.

The stigma being that it is better to just bottle up emotions or feelings you are having rather than talking to someone about them.

This is not true.

Talking to someone about anything will always make you feel better no matter what it is about.

Part of the stigma is that it is uncomfortable for people to admit they are not okay and it may be hard for them to confide in somebody that they just do not feel like themselves. This is something that not only needs to change in our society, but needs to become a norm.

A norm that admitting to yourself or anyone, “I’m not doing well” is okay, a part of life and most of all a step in the right direction.

A lot of times when people realize that they

Hayden Choate plays for the Springfield College men’s ice hockey club team. (Gillian Dube/ The Student)

NBA player Kevin Love was at the forefront of advocating for mental health in sports. (Photo courtesy of the Associated Press)

are not okay is when they should stop to take a step back. They realize that they are going through the motions of their everyday life or they just feel off.

This is exactly when the phrase “It’s okay to not be okay” comes into effect.

In recent memory, one of the ways our society has become familiar with what it looks like to admit that prioritizing mental health is important has been athletes using their platforms.

In 2018, Cleveland Cavaliers forward Kevin Love came forward publicly speaking about his own mental health. Love admitted that he had been seeing a therapist for months after having a panic attack during a game in 2017.

Similarly, Vegas Golden Knights goalie Robin Lehner came forward around the same time, opening up about his own mental health. Lehner had struggled with suicidal thoughts, drug and alcohol addictions and was diagnosed with bipolar 1 disorder with manic phases.

The bipolar diagnosis came after Lehner, just like Love, had a panic attack during a game in March of 2018.

There are a lot of other cases of professional athletes using their platform to discuss mental health. We look at these athletes as larger-than-life figures but for them to bring the public’s attention to prioritizing mental health shows that we are all human.

One of the biggest moments of an athlete coming forward about their mental health was recently in the summer of 2021.

This past summer when the Olympics were held in Tokyo after being postponed a year due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, one of the big storylines was Simone Biles.

The United States Gymnast who competed in her second Olympic games and is only 24 years old, made a statement to the whole world.

After putting on instagram that she had been “feeling the weight of the world on her shoulders” from the Olympics, she withdrew from team competition because of her mental health.

“I say put mental health first. Because if you don’t, then you’re not going to enjoy your sport and you’re not going to succeed as much as you want to. So it’s OK sometimes to even sit out the big competitions to focus on yourself, because it shows how strong of a competitor and person that you really are — rather than just battle through it,” Biles said via NPR.

On the world stage Biles made a strong statement about the importance of mental health by prioritizing her own. The backlash she was surrounded with after her decision of people calling her a lot of disgusting things but the main one was “quitter”.

Although mental health is talked about a lot more in today’s society some people are still ignorant to it.

While Simone Biles’ decision was talked about around the globe, one day at the surf camp I work at in the summer a couple of kids were talking about it.

“Simone Biles is a quitter,” a girl said.

“My parents told me Simone Biles didn’t quit, she’s just sick,” another little girl argued.

Now, I understand that parents probably don’t want their kids taking opinions from their 21-year old surf instructor but in that instance I had to step in.

“She’s not sick, she didn’t quit, she needed to take a mental break from the stress of competition,” I said.

What Biles did is not only courageous, but to admit to the entire world watching that she is not okay is incredible.

The best thing to do to destroy this stigma that asking for help is embarrassing or uncomfortable is to keep spreading the small but important phrase.

“It’s okay, to not be okay.”

We’re all human. Give yourself a break. Spread that phrase, someone who has not heard that phrase may need to more than ever.

A mental adjustment

The 2020-2021 school year took a toll on many Springfield College students, and they are now getting back to the routine of having fully in-person classes.

___ By Jac St. Jean ___ @jacsaintj

This fall marks the first full semester of in-person classes since the fall semester of 2019. After roughly 10 grueling months of attempting to learn remotely and virtually, Springfield College students are now back in the classrooms and learning in a physical space with others and their teachers right in front of them.

One can only wonder how almost a year of learning online has affected the minds of college students, and how they are dealing with being back in an in-person setting. Senior and sports management major Chris Mills had a lot to say about his experience in the previous academic year.

“Being in the classroom to me is really important,” Mills stressed. “When I’m on Zoom, especially when you have the camera turned off, I can just be zoned out entirely the whole time. I feel like I wasn’t learning anything at all, almost like paying money to sit around.”

Mills believes his retention of information took a bit of a dip in the 2020-2021 school year. Although online learning did not affect his grades, it did impact his focus in the “classroom” when he would have to log onto Zoom to learn. Now, having a fully in-person class schedule, Mills has readjusted quickly to the physical classroom setting.

“I don’t know if it really affected me much,” Mills explained. “I can catch up pretty quickly. At the beginning maybe I was a little bit slower because I hadn’t been in a classroom setting in a while… but being back in a classroom setting you kind of had to catch up.”

In March of 2020, right before students left for spring break, President Cooper announced that all classes would be conducted virtually for the remainder of the school year. Mills returned to his hometown of Hamden, CT, and had to finish up his sophomore year at home.

“It was like the semester basically ended when we got sent home,” Mills expressed. “I remember in a couple of my classes I felt weeks behind on assignments. From March to April I was checked out, and I lost all focus on work. I was at home and doing nothing. I would say it had a really big impact on my ability to do work and focus.”

Starting his senior year back at Alden Street, Mills is relieved and happy to be in a physical classroom with his friends in his major.

“It’s nice to actually be back and be somewhat normal,” Mills said. “I told my roommate one day when we were in line at Dunkin that it’s actually nice to be in a line that goes out the door for once, because we didn’t have that last year. To actually see places filling up again, it’s nice to have that experience and be around people.”

As a senior, Mills’ first two years at Springfield were ones of a normal college experience. But for students in the Class of 2024, they are just now experiencing the typical college academic year that they did not get the

Springfield College now no longer has limitations on capacity for in-person classes. (Photo courtesy of Springfield College Athletics)

Springfield College’s signature New Student Orientation was able to be held completely in person this year. (Photo courtesy of Springfield College)

chance to experience when they first arrived as first-year students.

Sophomore and English/Secondary Education major Hailley Boutin is currently feeling the effects of her previous academic year that was spent online. As a member of the high school senior Class of 2020 at Belchertown High School, Boutin’s final year in high school finished in a virtual setting.

“I had always been one of those students where doing school work was what I did,” Boutin stated. “I was an honors student and an AP student, so I was always doing work. It was so weird to not be given that expectation anymore.”

Boutin’s final months at Belchertown High School were very relaxed. Seniors were not given any real work leading up to graduation, according to Boutin, and she believes that this combined with her first-year experience at Springfield has affected her and the rest of her graduating class.

“It’s definitely weird,” Boutin stated. “One thing that I know a lot of kids in my grade have talked about is that we feel like we don’t know who is in our class, because we were all either online with our cameras off, or we were doing NSO with just the people on our floors… socially it’s very weird.”

Now back to being in-person, Boutin is experiencing a normal college year later than normal. Not only has this been a detriment to social life within her class, but it also has caused many of her former classmates from high school to transfer schools or leave college entirely.

“When we got cut off it was [around the time] we were all getting our acceptances,” Boutin explained. “We just picked [our colleges] without talking to teachers or guidance counselors.”

Boutin and many other students in the Class of 2024 are struggling to adjust to a college setting. Their preparation in high school that was cut short and lost, along with their initial college year being conducted online, has severely impacted their ability to focus and work in the rigorous curriculum.

“I haven’t had a single class on Zoom this semester.” Boutin continued, “so it meant actually getting up and going to class. Being on zoom, you can sit there and pay attention in class and also be doing other stuff, whereas now it’s like ‘I’m in class’. I’ve always loved school and learning, but it was really hard to fall back into sitting and focusing because my attention span had just been lost from doing Zoom for an entire year.”

Boutin, along with the rest of her graduating class, is currently preparing to register for her spring semester classes and signing up for MTELs. Her experience of online learning at Springfield College, along with that of Mills, has shown the heavy effects of the 2020-2021 academic year.

Despite this, both students are still powering through their classes, and are prime examples of how students at Springfield have adapted and overcome the troubling year of learning via zoom. If you or other students are struggling academically, contact the Academic Success Center at tutoringasc@springfieldcollege.edu .