by Lisa Adams
I grew up on this campus. I spent many hours of my childhood running around campus, getting into mischief and learning about myself. Twenty six years to the day from leaving Carrollton, I returned to work here as a counselor and then Director of Counseling. I could not have told you when I left that I would return to Carrollton, and be happy to do so. Life has a funny way of working out in a full circle kind of way.
Turns out, one can come home again, but not as one was before. Time, travels, several college degrees, and motherhood changed the girl who left Carrollton into the woman who returned. This shaping and molding lead me to choose a career where I can help people change and grow, and to also work in higher education, as my father before me. I believe in education, I believe it challenges people to grow and question their own thinking. I believe this was essential to my own development. Becoming a counselor has been at times difficult and at times rewarding, and it has always been an honor to do this work.
I say all of this to demonstrate how I work at West Georgia. I bring my whole self, all of my experiences, my successes and failures to this work and in doing so I am allowed to express myself in and through my work. This feels like a real privilege, this is not 9-5, this is soul work. The Counseling Center is a place where students can learn about themselves and others; grow into the men and women they are to become; and find respite in a sometimes overwhelming world. This work requires of the counselors their full attention, their full genuine personhood and empathy and caring. It also requires a sense of humor; the human condition is sometimes too tragic, and humor makes it bearable.
In many ways I am a product of the University of West Georgia, this institution put bread on the table of my childhood, but it gave me much more than that, along with my family, my church and my passion for storytelling, first expressed in theatre and then in counseling. The University of West Georgia is the rich soil of my life, the place where the bulb of self was planted, and a place of beauty and comfort and of turmoil (I grew up in the seventies, WGC was happening). A place where I first learned about winning and losing, right and wrong, fragility and strength. And ultimately a place where I returned to give some measure of these same gifts to others.
Lisa Adams is the director of counseling and career development.
