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She went on to teach in Chapel Hill’s school system for several years before having children and becoming a stay-at-home mother for 19 years. Joines Prentice, Ball State special education graduate student, graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s undergraduate program in 1995. Twenty-five years ago, Annie Joines Prentice thought her educational journey was finished. I wanted to push myself to do something that nobody else in my family has ever even thought of doing - just kind of getting to the highest level that I can has always been a dream of mine. “I know that it's something I've always wanted. It's absolutely hard to be in school for so long and to get burned out,” she said. Avoiding burnout will be her biggest challenge over the next few years, something she said is relatable for many of her fellow students in her cohort. McLain said she’s looking forward to graduating soon, even though graduation for her means more schooling in the Ball State PhD program. “When I was on clinical rotations in nursing school, a lot of times my peers would have to come pull me out of patient rooms because I would just have a chair pulled up next to their bed and I would just kind of be talking to them about life,” she said.īall State, with what she described as a “humanistic approach” to its curriculum, allowed her to approach her future career the way she had wanted to since she started her education. While going through nursing school, McLain realized a more personal, time-intensive approach to patient care suited her best. “I still get to have that kind of medical focus in my background but in a counseling setting, so being able to do that with a master's program, I was really excited,” McLain said. Before changing her major to psychology, she spent two and a half years studying nursing, so Ball State’s master’s program in rehabilitation counseling allowed her to continue that work. McLain hopes to use her training in rehabilitation counseling to help people with chronic illnesses and disabilities, something she retained from her time at Le Moyne. She is now finishing that master’s degree and will continue pursuing her counseling psychology doctorate at Ball State. McLain entered Ball State in the fall 2019 semester, when she started her master’s in rehabilitation counseling.
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Ball State’s graduate program eliminated that decision.