Southwestern College Santa Fe, NM
Ten Tips for New Students, from former SWC President Jim Nolan
1. You are on the verge of an experience that will change your life. Allow it, lean into it, be curious, not afraid or against…If you are the kind that HAS to fight about stuff, I guess you will, but I would not recommend it. (I was that way once…it just slowed me down. I was just ornery, for no good reason other than fear…OK, so maybe I still do it once in a while…)
2. When you can get away with not doing the work, or reading the book, or participating in the experience, do the work, read the book, and participate in the experience anyway. Make that your default decision…
3. You will learn as much or more from your student colleagues as you do from any books…Stay open to those connections…
4. When tempted to bond with others around complaining, or negativity, find a more positive energy reason to bond. It pays off, and that first option can become a lifestyle that never ever pays off…
5. Discover Del Charro
6. Check in on our Facebook pages regularly—they are really active, and offer good information, tips, blogs, teachings, and goofinesses…
7. Go to Taos Pueblo
8. Remember that you have been chosen because we believe you can become an extraordinary Counselor, or Art Therapist, or both. We did not invite you here in order to run you through some test to PROVE to us that you can be—we already know it.
9. If you find yourself not resonating with a teaching, or an approach, or a point of view, or an instructor, or a book—stay curious, not judgmental, and continue to trust your own point of view. Making a decision to start trusting an instructor’s Truth over your own could keep you from discovering and trusting your own Inner Knowing, and cultivating your own Inner Knower, after all, is the biggest point of this whole dealio…
10. Enjoy your experience. People get through the hardest times, through internship, through the licensing exam. Check out this page and see all the awesome people in awesome jobs who once were in your shoes, at the beginning of their Southwestern College career…Look at them now…you will be on that page soon….
Warmly,
Jim
