Latigdra Brown who graduated with a Bachelors Degree in Psychology from the University of Louisiana struggled to find her self in college. In fact she left with more questions than she started with. Her journey to find fulfillment in her work led her to Houston, TX where she accepted a job at Lone Star Community College as a Financial Aid Advisor. Shortly thereafter Ms. Brown accepted a position as a Chemical Dependency Counselor working with male/female adults and juveniles. Her exceptional work as a counselor led her to the Federal Bureau of Prisons where she counsels incarcerated males. Ms. Brown is not only passionate about reaching young people but also passionate about how technology can help her do so more effectively.
Q: It’s interesting that you left college with more questions then what you started with. Perhaps that speaks to what you’ve learned about yourself and life in general. What was the nature of those questions and has your career thus far help you answer any of them?
A: The questions I was left with were of those that I have heard many people ask themselves. What is my purpose? Is the path I am choosing to take the correct path? Will I be happy with the course of education I have taken? Will I find work and will it be worth having? Will I make a difference?
My career has put me more at ease with those questions because at least if I am not sure of the path I have taken, I can at least help and educate someone along the way. In my career, I have also learned that it is never too late to discover what your purpose truly is and when that purpose is fully understood you will come to a fork in the road. And then a decision will need to be made on whether to stay the course that you have been on or to go in the direction of purpose.
Q: What do you say to a young man incarcerated who has given up on him self and the hope that his future could be any different from his past?
A: Helping someone, especially a young male, understand their past, their present and their potential is a slow and life long process. Often times it is not what I could say to them but what they have been saying to themselves. There are many thinking errors that men of a criminal or drug abuse lifestyle struggle with. The one spoken about is “No Matter What I Do, Nothing Is Going To Change”. My job is more of a listener, only paraphrasing back what that individual has said to me. My goal is to guide them in seeing the thinking errors they may have, how it has affected their life so far and how they can change their thinking to be a more productive/adaptive person. It’s more like helping a person see what’s been in front of them their entire life. We so often believe giving advice and a solution to a problem will automatically solve the problem but the population of people I interact with simply long to have someone listen and understand them. They look for someone to empathize with the reason they decided on their past choices, to not judge, to care.
Q: What role do you see technology playing in the hands of a skilled counselor such as yourself in aiding you to do your job more effectively?
A: Adolescents are more geared toward electronics in today’s times and I believe in reaching them where they are. As a counselor, I must be as up-to-date with information as my clients are in order to best help them. And what better way to do that than to have the most technological advances at my fingertips. Many of the adolescents and young adults that I work with do not have opportunity to get information from creditable sources and have been led to maladaptive decision because of what has been presented to them in their home life. I have seen some interactive web-based activities that help youth in understanding how mood altering substances can have a negative effect on them and how criminal activities can lead to permanent uncalculated outcomes. Technology can help me better present and explain these effects to the youth and the information can be reach more quickly and easily.
Q: Do you think that other professionals in your line of work see technology as a viable option to help them do their jobs more effectively?
A: Yes. As clinicians, we must stay current on the advancement of technology and a better way to present information to our clients. If technology is passing us by we are not continuing our own education and are being lost with the passing of time. Other clinicians have been and will always be looking for better ways to spread knowledge in the area of their study and to the specific cliental they reach.