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Tuesday, November 29, 2016

A Guidance Counsellor

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I was in grade nine and doing pretty well in school. I had done grade 12 computers when I was in grade 8, and did grade 10 accounting in summer school before high-school started. I was ahead three full course credits above anyone else, and I was on a roll with an 85% average thus far.

One day I got a great idea and went into the guidance department at my school. I spoke to a counsellor and suggested that I should take a night school history course on top of my existing full schedule, because I could handle it.

The guidance counsellor assured me that I probably could handle the extra load. But then he asked me a question that was interesting. “Do you have any friends?” he asked. I think I started to cry. I had no friends, and I was bored, lonely, and depressed.

My counsellor, RW, suggested that it was more important for me to create a social network, than to complete high-school early. I took on his advice, and the trajectory of my destiny shifted right there any then.

In the coming months, I started seeing a psychiatrist regularly and would miss many of my classes. I enrolled in every extra curricular activity I found interesting and started taking initiatives to make friends.

In took many years, visiting RW on numerous occasions every week whenever I was blue, or bored. He would often chat with me for hours after school, or even drive me to his house to meet his family. I got well acquainted with each member of his family…

I enjoyed this life much better. But I was still depressed, and my grades began to drop. By grade twelve, I was seeing a psychiatrist three times a week, working on my own business ventures, hardly going to school, and getting a 63% average.

After high-school, I got out of my funk, made lots of friends, and was making good money.

My life would be so different right now if it wasn’t for RW. But would it be different for the better or worse?

Would I have just gotten straight A’s in high-school, having no friends, and then head off to a university? Perhaps that university experience would have given me the social playground I needed, plus I would have a university degree today. Maybe I wouldn’t be as depressed, because I would have suppressed it enough and wouldn’t have been triggered by any pharmaceuticals or therapies.

Or maybe my life would be much worse.

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