PS115 Unit 6 Careers Seminar Reflection Example

The Seminar That Added a Master's Degree to My Plan: A PS115 Unit 6 Seminar Reflection on Careers in Psychology

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

PS115: Psychology Program and Profession

Unit 6 Seminar Reflection

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The writer, the classmates and the seminar guest are composite; the sources cited are real.

My Plan Going In

My plan felt settled when the Unit 6 seminar began. I would finish the bachelor's degree with the addictions concentration, earn an entry-level counseling credential and start counseling people with substance use disorders. My Unit 2 paper had already found that independent practice in Ohio requires a graduate degree, but I had treated that as a distant possibility rather than part of the plan. In my mind, the bachelor's degree would let me do the work I wanted, and a master's degree would be optional.

What I Heard

The seminar covered careers available at each degree level. Our instructor walked through roles open to bachelor's graduates, case management, behavioral health technician work, peer support with lived experience, and roles requiring graduate degrees. Then a classmate who has worked for three years as a case manager at a residential treatment program described her job. She coordinates housing, appointments and benefits, runs check-ins and fills in the paperwork that keeps a client's treatment going. What she does not do is provide counseling. Her program uses master's-level licensed counselors for that, and bachelor's-level staff work under their supervision.

I asked whether that was typical. The instructor said it varies by state and by program, but that most programs she knew of reserved individual counseling for licensed staff, and that the entry-level credential I had read about allows supervised work rather than independent practice.

I had been planning for the job I wanted with the degree for the job before it.

A second moment mattered too. Another classmate, who is in recovery herself, said she was planning to work as a peer recovery specialist and described the training her state requires: a certification course, supervised hours and a code of ethics of its own. She said her lived experience was the qualification that mattered most in that role, and that peer specialists and counselors do different jobs on the same team. Until then I had thought of peer support as an informal version of counseling. Listening to her, I realized it is its own profession with its own standards, and that the Models of Peer Recovery course in my concentration exists because the field takes it seriously (Purdue University Global, 2026).

What Changed

The answer changed my plan in a specific way. I no longer think of a master's degree as optional. If I want to provide counseling, rather than support the people who do, I need a graduate degree in counseling and the supervised hours that follow it. The bachelor's degree is still the right first step, and the work I can do with it, case management or technician work, is not a lesser version of my goal but the experience that will make me a better counselor and a stronger graduate school applicant.

Landrum and Davis (2014) note that many psychology majors discover late that their intended careers require graduate study, and that discovering it early gives time to prepare. I am glad to have found out in my first course rather than my last.

What I Will Do Differently

Three things change in my plan. First, my career research in Unit 7 will now look at master's programs in counseling, including their admission requirements, alongside the jobs I can hold while I study. Second, before graduating I want a few shifts a week inside a treatment program, perhaps as a technician, so my application shows real exposure. Third, I will ask my advisor which of my remaining courses would best prepare me for graduate admission, since counselors in many states need a master's degree for licensure (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024).

My view of the coming three years shifted as well. I had been treating my courses as boxes to check before the real work begins. The case manager's description made me see the bachelor's years as a chance to build exactly the experience a graduate program and an employer will look for: research skills from the methods course, case management skills from the clinical courses and time in a treatment setting. That makes the degree feel less like a waiting period and more like the first stage of the work.

Questions the Seminar Left Open

I cannot yet say whether I can afford two more years of school after the bachelor's degree while working full time. I also wonder whether the peer support role, which the classmate described as growing, might suit me in a different way. I want to keep both questions open until the career research is done.

References

Landrum, R. E., & Davis, S. F. (2014). The psychology major: Career options and strategies for success (5th ed.). Pearson.

Purdue University Global. (2026). 2026-2027 catalog. https://catalog.purdueglobal.edu/

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2024). Substance abuse, behavioral disorder, and mental health counselors. In Occupational outlook handbook. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/community-and-social-service/substance-abuse-behavioral-disorder-and-mental-health-counselors.htm