I began early adulthood feeling so lost and unsure, switching majors before finding my passion in psychology. I dropped out of college twice, taking two separate gap years trying to figure out what I wanted to do. The first time I dropped out, I had ran away from my own life for too long before I caught up with myself — you always bring you with you, no matter where you land. I was pre-med, art therapy, nursing… all things that I thought I wanted.

The truth was, I had zero idea what I wanted, so I went by what anyone in my life wanted. People-pleasing was my default for quite some time. My own mental health was suffering because of doing what I thought was right for me, but was really only right according to everyone else. The second gap year, I landed in IOP and in the beginning, I started wondering what I was going to do: 21, dropped out of college twice, lost, shell of a human being. IOP gave me the strength to take the risk, and as fate would have it, there was a job fair at a local inpatient psych hospital and I got a job as a tech. It changed my life, and I knew this was it for me. I met people who I still call my mentors today and worked there while finishing undergrad. Eventually, I graduated with a BS in Psychology from Penn State in 2018 and went straight into graduate school, finishing with my MA in Counseling from Arcadia University in 2021.