Hey! I'm Dylan Riemen
An emerging mental health counselor and peer leader.
Here’s My Story
Hello! I'm a third-year college student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign studying Clinical Psychology and Social Work. With a passion for mental health counseling and children's development, I hope to one day become a School Psychologist and help the countless children in need. My top five strengths are individualization, futuristic, a relator, input, and analytical. Combined, I believe school psychology fulfills those strengths perfectly as I have a combination of empathy and logic, both of which are needed to accurately diagnose students, come up with a treatment plan, and ultimately, heal the invisible wounds so many carry.
My Resume
When Preparation Fails, Vulnerability Shines Through
There’s only so much preparation you can do when you walk into the classroom every day. I’d put hours and hours into designing the lesson plans, discussion questions, and PowerPoint presentations, going over it repeatedly so that I’d be ready to present everything confidently. But no matter how much I went over my questions, there was never a predictable day. I was constantly surprised by the thought-provoking and challenging questions my students would pose, quickly teaching me the value of knowing how to improvise and think quickly on my feet because, inevitably, my preparation would fail. It was never the questions about what I was teaching that would catch me off guard but the personal struggles that students would open up about. Sometimes, there wouldn’t even be a question, just a statement and a look to me for help. I admired these students for opening up and admitting their first-year difficulties in front of the class, but it terrified me to let them down. Fighting through the sinking feeling in my stomach, I gravitated towards a strategy many might consider counterintuitive in uncomfortable situations. I opened up. I showed them that they were not alone by telling some of my stories and how I persevered through them. I provided support, advice, and recommendations of resources around campus that I had used to help get through their challenges. It wasn’t easy, but learning to be comfortable with the uncomfortable helped me reach these students and help them far more than I ever thought possible.
Skill Gained: Implementing Weekly Lesson Plans and Facilitating Meaningful Discussions
Empathy is Key. Agency is King.
Everybody reacts to their first semester of college differently. On every end of the spectrum, people are sinking, swimming, and straight-up drowning. While I had my fair share of challenging experiences, I overcame my first year, and I knew I could never hope to be able to fully understand and provide sound advice to all the problems each student in my class would face. Realizing this, I reflected on what helped me get through my first year and build a successful lifestyle for college. I realized that learning strategies, coping mechanisms, and skills to bolster my ability to withstand the tough times and make the most of the good ones was the key. So, instead of providing solutions to my students’ problems, I supported them to find them themselves. To do this, I developed a two-step process. First, empathizing with my students and letting them fully explain how they are feeling was vital to building a comfortable rapport while helping me better grasp the problem at hand. Once I had listened, I asked them if they had tried anything yet to overcome this issue. Based on their answer, I mixed my responses with both empathy and guidance to provide them the agency to develop a solution that worked best for them rather than assume what I thought was good. Doing so strengthened their resilience to bounce back without my help next time, enabling me to assist the diverse needs of my group far beyond class time.
Skill Gained: Recognizing and Addressing the Individual Needs of a Diverse Group of Students
Leading by Example Requires Leading Yourself
While I knew that taking on this class was going to be an additional workload on my already busy semester, I’ll admit that I underestimated how challenging finding a balance would be. But as I was adjusting to this, I realized that I was being a hypocrite while teaching my lessons to the class. I was providing sound strategies for balancing school, personal life, and social life, but I was not following my teachings. In fact, I could’ve benefitted greatly if I had. When students would come to me and describe some of the issues they were facing, it almost felt like I was looking myself in the face. My problems mirrored theirs, and helping them was not so easy when I wasn’t helping myself first. This wasn’t just due to the fact that I was being hypocritical, but also the mental toll that not having my life in order took on me. It translated to what I felt was not the best I could give my students in every aspect of the class, and so I became determined to fix this. I followed the same advice I had been preaching and built habits that cracked down on the procrastination issues I had been having. The result? My life benefitted, which in turn led to the students benefitting from my increased enthusiasm and experience in knowing that what I teach works. Thus, by learning to lead myself first, I was able to lead others down the same path to success effectively.
Skill Gained: Learning to Balance Academic and Personal Responsibilities While Promoting My and Others Wellness
Helping Now To Save More Later
Ultimately, many of the skills and strategies I built and utilized to be a successful peer mentor and leader for these first-year students are the very same I hope to one day use in my career. With the aspiration to become a school psychologist, much of the day-to-day work that involves the same kind of mental health support and problem-solving in an academic setting that I have become accustomed to addressing through this job. I take my personal development to become a school psychologist seriously, as my ability to help others will have a direct and profound impact on hundreds, if not thousands, of students' lives throughout my lifetime. I do not take that responsibility lightly, and so any and every opportunity I have to begin building the skills needed to do that in a lower-risk setting successfully is something I have been eager to do. This experience has by far been the best in doing so, as being a peer mentor has taught me the value of agency in addressing so many diverse needs, how essential taking care of myself is, and how open, honest, and vulnerable conversations can be key in helping others to open up and share their experiences. These lessons by no means encompass everything I need to learn for my future career, but I am confident that I will be a better school psychologist because of taking on this challenging job.
Skill Gained: Using This Experience to Ideate Future Academic, Professional, and Personal Opportunities
