About

1. Peyton Mauck
2. peyton.mauck@live.longwood.edu
3. Psychology Major
4. Virginia
5. A children’s therapist

SOCL 220

Coursework

Identity Portfolio Part 1

 Age: 19

Gender identity: Female

Gender: Female

National origin: England

sexual orientation: Straight

mental/ physical ability: ADHD, Dyslexia

race: white

I identify with my mental and physical abilities because I may have restrictions with my ADHD and Dyslexia, but overcoming them and learning to live with a disability makes me stronger and more resilient. The resilience I have learned translates to who I want my future self to be as learning how to work around my dyslexia has made me strong and makes it easier for me to put in the work which is what I will have do to when I become a therapist. Another identity important to me is my age as I am still a teenager it is important to understand that now is the time to make mistakes and learn from it. My age is important as when I know the mistakes I have made and understand them I can relate to clients when I am a therapist.

My Dyslexia and ADHD used to play a big role in my self-esteem, as I used to struggle with positive self-esteem when I was younger, thinking that people would see me differently if they knew I had Dyslexia, looking at me think I was dumb. As I have grown up, I have realized that it is a part of who I am and to be proud of it. Getting a positive self-esteem towards my Dyslexia has made me have a sense of efficacy achieving my goals and understand how I can get to each goal I set. Talking about my Dyslexia and see how common it is has made me have a sense of mattering knowing that I am not alone and that I do matter. Age has always played a role in mattering as I have felt important and understood when I am around people my age knowing that I relate to how most of these people were raised in this era of time. My self-esteem in situation when I am with people who are in a common age range as me is positive including how these people feel during this time period. I also have a sense of efficacy as I am competing with common goals as the people that are my age knowing that we have similarities that relate to when we want to achieve our goals such as going to college and achieve the goal of graduating college.

The identities important to the job that I want are my skills, such as the skill of problem-solving and work ethic. These strengths are necessary for being a therapist know as these skills will help me in the long run. I also think that the impact that I want to have on people is important as I want to make a change in people’s mental health and help people achieve their personal goals. Knowing that people also reach out for me when they need good advice as I am a good listener that can give advice that will help them understand the issue they are dealing with.

Professional Self

My purpose for working is to be able to help the world by giving back, especially through therapy, to help people with their mental challenges. I feel a need to help others and do good for the world to try and make a change. I also feel a purpose to work, as it is a social norm that I want to follow, as most people go to college and then either the workforce or to graduate school. My final purpose to work is to gain knowledge as it is something to do with your time that can be valuable and meaningful to the world that gives fulfillment. I think it is important to find a job that makes you feel fulfilled and give your life a purpose.

I am motivated to want to work is to provide for my family when I get older. I think that being able to live a comfortable life is very important, as the stress of raising a family while being financially unstable can bring unnecessary stress, which could lead to an unstable household. I also want to work to be able to travel, as traveling has been such a unique part of my childhood being able to see the world at such a young age. Being explore different cultures and learn about different parts of history in school and growing my knowledge by seeing historical sights in person has made me the person I am today. I also want to be able to support the lifestyle my parents have given me growing up being able to buy clothes and other nice items. My parents have given me a comfortable life that I want to keep up with gives me a motivation to work.

Work experiences that have made me feel fulfilled have been my trip to Costa Rica, when I volunteered to help out in a school and helped serve meals to the kids, and worked in the garden to help grow the food that was served in the school. I felt fulfilled by this as I was giving back to a community that needed help, and because of this, it made an impactful mark on me seeing how other cultures interact and work. Another work experience is my winter job as a ski instructor where I usually teach kids ages 2 to 18 which can sometimes be frustrating as they might not understand directions or not care to learn how to ski. When the student finally gets how to ski it is fulfilling as I know I have made a positive impact on there life. My summer job on the other hand as a camp counselor is a job that is extremely fulfilling as it is at a camp that I grew up going to and being able to give back to the community that has shaped me into the person I am today is extremely fulfilling. As head of athletics it can be fun to teach kids camp games or just how to play common field games seeing them have as much fun as I had when I was there age. Being able to see how I was as a camper through the eyes of someone on the other side has been one of the most fulfilling jobs I have ever had.

I have enjoyed most of my work and volunteer experiences that I have partaken in, but some of the volunteer experiences that I have enjoyed have been the most fulfilling. I have enjoyed working at Camp Mont Shenandoah as a camp counselor for the past 3 summers, being able to be a child again at the place where I have some of my favorite memories. I enjoy working at camp because I get to see it from another prospective that some campers may never see. I also enjoy doing the behind that sense work which makes me appreciate how much work my counselors have put into making my summers so unforgettable. Another job that I have enjoyed is working as a ski instructor as skiing has been such a big part of my life since I was 1. Knowing how much skiing has given to me makes me want to share my passion with others by teaching them how to ski and understanding that this might become a big passion for them one day. A volunteer experience that I have enjoyed is when my school had a volunteer day and we worked together to fill bags with rice for them to be sent to Africa to feed the less fortunate. This experience was enjoyable for me as I was working with my friends to weight, fill and close the bags as it was fun to work together while giving back.

I have had job and volunteer experiences that I have not enjoyed. When I teach skiing, sometimes I get put into a group lesson, which is 4-6 people who have never skied before. These types of lessons can be very frustrating and hard to teach different learning styles at the same time, including when some people pick up skiing faster than others. A volunteer experience that I did not enjoy is when I went with my school to work in a cemetery that had not had maintenance done on it in a long time we worked to cut down over grown grass and weeds. I had to use a machete to cut down the weeds and at the end of the day I did not feel fulfilled or like I had done something productive with my day but instead I felt like I had done something wrong as I did not like working in a cemetery. Another volunteer experience I did not enjoy was when I went to Costa Rica we helped out in a nursing home by doing laundry and working in the kitchen. This work felt pointless and I did not feel as if I had helped during the day I worked by moping the kitchen and washing and folding laundry that was not my own was not an experience that I enjoyed.

The hard skills I have learn consist of knowing how to analyze data, coding, and marketing, as I have learned these through my years at school. The soft skills I have developed include being a good listener, collaborating with others in a group, and effective communication.

When asking others what I am good at, people say that I am good at active listening while being prepared with a good response or advice. The skill of communication is important as it is something most people do not have as it give me experience for future jobs being able to communicate while being an active listener when dealing with people in therapy, working with a team, or getting critical feedback. I have also been told that I am creative, I like to think outside the box when it come to projects or just critical thinking. Being able to think outside the box gives me flexibility to bring new ideas into research or just ways of fixing issues. I have also been told that I am a flexible person and I don’t let little inconveniences or change of plans stress me out instead I use it to my advantage making sure I can go with the flow. Being told that I am good at being flexible is important as I can work with hard issues and I can use my good work ethic to my advantage.

I have worked on communication when I worked as a camp counselor two summers ago. I was put into a cabin with my co-counselors, who were my two best friends. I was very excited for that summer and being with them, but as the summer went on, we had a lot of different views that made us have disagreements putting a strain on our friendship. I had to use communication to tell them how I felt about the situation which was hard for me as I didn’t know how to approach it. As co-counselors we had to work on our communication as we could leave the cabin during rest hour if one counselors was in the cabin but as I liked to nap during rest hour I would always be left in the cabin which was frustrating for me since they stopped asking. Learning how to communicate with them and tell them that as a group we needed to communicate better made the summer much easier. We were able to work better as a group making our cabin run more cohesively.

Critical thinking is an aspect that I had not thought about until my senior year in high school, when I took an environmental class. In this class, we had no tests or quizzes, only writing responses, which we had to use critical thinking to talk about the documentaries we had watched in class after I had gotten back the first writing response I did not understand why I got the grade I got when I thought I had done critical thinking but I had not. I had to learn critical thinking and be able to analyze the topics that we were learning the class to understand how to answer these writing responses. Being able to use critical thinking to get outside the box with my thinking allowed me to achieve the grade I wanted to focus on how the topics we were learning related to each other.

Teamwork is a component that I have had to learn during the years, as I have been put into group projects, service activities with multiple people, where we had to work together, and during my work experiences. My skill of teamwork truly grew this past summer at camp as I was co-head of athletics, an activity at camp. Me and my other head used teamwork when making the lineups for team competitions which happened every weekend. We would decide who was writing down the line up from each team dividing up the work so not one person had to do it all. We also would use communication to help our teamwork grow as we would talk about different aspects that needed to be done to make sure the weekend ran smoothly. Even if we knew one of us was going to do the task that needed to be done we would still use communication to make sure that the other knew it would be completed. I developed my skill of teamwork to be stronger knowing that communication is the best way to make sure everything gets done.

I had to use professionalism when I had an interview with Sewanee, which is a university in Tennessee. I prepared for this interview by researching the school in greater depth, making questions to ask about different clubs and programs that I had seen on their website. I maintained a level of professionalism during the entire interview by being engaged with the woman interviewing me, answering her questions which thoughtful answers and asking my questions when I had felt the time was right. I showed professionalism in this aspect of my college journey giving myself a greater chance of getting into this school. During the interview I also maintained eye contact kept, held accountability for different aspects of my life especially the ones I was proud of showing myself as an all around applicant.

My cover letter and resume are an attempt to present myself professionally, using a front stage, which allows me to be seen in a professional manner. By using my resume and cover letter as a front stage, being created by my back stage, preparing myself to be called for an interview. In the cover letter I use create an interest in the job by making myself sound professional saying how important jobs in the field of psychology are especially when it is therapy. By sharing my interest I present myself as invested and create the impression through expression which is important when looking to be hired for a job. In my resume I list out my skills which are important to show how I may be the right fit for the job. I also use my resume to set up my work experience relating it to mental health work through my camp counseling job. I show that I can teach through my job as a ski instructor showing I know how to deal with different types of learning styles which will be important when looking for therapist as they work with different clients who may need to learn different coping mechanism. I present myself as a person who can adapt to different people and make myself fit another persons needs.

Being a Clinical Psychologist is a job that can create a lot of stress, some of those stress factors being putting others before yourself in sessions. In sessions with your clients you have to be able to give advice to them at any time putting your personal problems behind you which may be hard for some people to adapt to as it can be difficult to deal with others problems when you have your own personal life. Another stress factor may be conflicting patients and dealing with patient confidentiality this can be stressful as if you have two patients that may know each other and are having issues that result in them talking in sessions about each other you have to stick to patient confidentiality. Another factor related to this is dealing with being unbiased about your opinions on the patient as you may be dealing with a patient that you may not like you still have to keep an open mind. It can be stressful to deal with patients that you personally do not favor but for your job you can not be bias against them as you have to come into work with an open and clear mind. Models that can help with this stress may be differential exposure model which is when you have status that leads to a stressor and finally distress which can be helpful when dealing with hard situations to get exposure that can lead to you leaving any conflicting issues out of the job. Another model that can help is differential vulnerability model which is status to learning coping resources to distress this model might be the best way to deal with stress as you can decompress before getting to stressed during a situation leading you to become a better therapist.