two homes, a pond apart
Jana Parkin Sutton is an Assistant Professor of Marriage and Family Therapy and the Director of Clinical Services for the Marriage and Family Therapy Programs. She earned her Ph.D. in Marriage and Family Therapy from ULM where she began teaching full-time in the fall of 2005.
I grew up in the small town of Bishop Auckland, which is located northeast of England. I came to America in January of 1994 to pursue my college education with the expectation that I would return home immediately thereafter. Now, I have two homes: one in the U.K. and one in the US. It is strange, yet fascinating, to feel at home and out-of-place in two places simultaneously. The acculturation process, even for someone with English as her native language, can be difficult. However, I feel blessed to have two such wonderful communities of people and two nations to call my own.
What I do in my free time is predominantly scheduled by my children and thus ceases to be free time. I have three sons due to my overwhelming desire to have a daughter, and I would not change it for the world. Thus, I spend many hours watching soccer, riding four wheelers, shooting BB guns, and fishing. You see, I really am a Louisianan and am American after all. Otherwise, I would be spending many hours watching football!
ULM was the right place for me to follow my academic dreams, and it is also the perfect setting for me to pursue my professional dreams. It provides an ideal stage for me to be a teacher, a mentor, a clinical supervisor, and a researcher. I also provide the administrative support for community involvement and professional leadership. ULM, situated on beautiful Bayou DeSiard, shares the same characteristics of such a picturesque body of water: it is a hidden beauty admired and remembered by those who have ever happened to appear at the water's edge. Similarly, the ULM faculty and staff are like any family of cypress trees adorning the bayou. The bayou simply would not be the same without them. The bayou and cypress trees, ULM, and the faculty and staff, ultimately attracted me to ULM. To me, the family is small enough for each faculty member to be nurtured and for each faculty member to nurture each student. At the same time, the mission, dreams and expectations of ULM are large enough to promote academic and personal excellence.
All aspects of my job are extremely rewarding. I always dreamed of having fun in my career. I wanted a job that was not a "job." I have found it. It is a delight to help people find happiness. That is ultimately what I do in the clinical supervision aspect of my job, only it is double the fun. I get to simultaneously assist Marriage and Family Therapy students in becoming the most competent clinicians that they can, while assisting clients in solving their problems and reaching their goals. If I am providing supervision of supervision, the pleasure is tripled. I also prepare a senior student to become a supervisor (to train clinicians).
The accomplishment I am most proud of while at ULM is being appointed president of our state division of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy. To have the confidence of the membership, which includes many senior clinicians and academicians, is something I do not take lightly. However, the accomplishment is not an end in and of itself. Now, I have the pleasure of influencing and leading the field of marriage and family therapy in Louisiana.
One of my joys is being clinical supervisor of the Juvenile Drug Court Program. The ULM MFT Program Interns provide the clinical services to the local 4th Judicial District Court's Juvenile Drug Court Program. This involves providing all treatment services to not only the adolescents themselves, but to the parents and/or family members. Many of these families, in which an adolescent is involved with the legal system as well as with drugs and alcohol, have resources that are often overlooked. The ULM MFT Interns strive to assist families in identifying their strengths so that their family relationships improve and the reliance on drugs, alcohol, and the legal system is no longer necessary. To watch this transition is priceless.
One of my favorite memories while at ULM is receiving an award from the ULM MFT students. The award was student-driven and stated: "For your inspiring drive that motivates us to achieve our greatest potential as scholars, professionals, and clinicians." What more could a MFT Teacher ask for?
My favorite spot on campus is my office. I have an office overlooking the bayou so I am constantly provided the calming view of the water. My office is also where the majority of my writing is done and where the majority of my creativity takes place. Students love my comfy chair, so I am often paid unexpected visits too. Honestly, there is a lot of work, supervision, and fixing of problems that occur in my little office. Together, they are the reasons that I love my office.
If students left my classroom knowing only one thing, it would be that they not know what they knew when they walked in. If I can influence students in such a way that they question everything and are never certain what the right or wrong answer is, or even if there is one, then I have done my job. I teach students how to be therapists. If there were only one way of helping people in times of trouble, then neither I, nor they, would be needed, and we would not be honoring the individuality or uniqueness of every individual, couple, or family that seeks our help. That brings me to the second most important concept that I would like my students to leave my classroom knowing: the best therapist does not have a job, nor do they want to have a job, for to have a job means someone is suffering, in pain, or does not know where to turn.
One thing that most people don't know about me is how much I miss England and everything about it. I miss the pomp and circumstance that surrounds everything we do, I miss the countryside and the stone walls, I miss the palaces and the Cathedrals, I miss the British sense of humor, I miss the cold and rain terribly, and can you believe it, I miss the food? Most of all, I miss my friends and family. However, what I have learned in the missing of everything British, is that I can now cherish what I took for granted when I was growing up. Absence really does make the heart grow fonder, and it also allows one to be thankful for what one has. Therefore, I have an appreciation for my new life which includes my own family, my own ULM family, my career as a marriage and family therapist and educator, and all of the excitement that each of these holds.
What first attracted me to the field of marriage and family therapy is the systemic or nonlineal worldview that everything is interrelated and interconnected, elevating the context and complexity of problems to be a subject of intervention, rather than the problem itself. Along these same lines, a systemic worldview lends itself to a nonpathological view of behavior, freeing a therapist to fully believe in the concept of change--a concept I believe a therapist should fully believe in. The prospect of becoming a part of a new field intrigued me and was coupled with a desire to help not only individuals, but couples, families, and systems with situations in which they find themselves stuck. This field allows me to embody a hopeful rather than a hopeless stand, which is what I can only hope to one day fully achieve.
I do love to travel. And, in the future, one of my dreams is to partner with a marriage and family therapy program or training facility in another country to encourage our students to study abroad and to encourage more international students to study at ULM. The field of marriage and family therapy was founded by many international founding fathers and mothers, and the opportunity to collaborate more with institutions from their home lands ought to be explored.