Nia Thomas

Background

About Nia Thomas

The perspective brought by me as a student is one that values an understanding of multicultural awareness that cuts across traditional patterns of research boundaries. When I analyzed my first dataset with SPSS I felt confident and excited to be learning the tools to be able to directly impact people in the future. From that moment forward it only solidified my drive to gain as much knowledge as I could to to do my job with as much integrity and ethics as possible. In my time at Virginia Commonwealth University I have been able to act on one of my passions. For a semester I shadowed and assisted a representative of “Art on wheels” seeking to help a population of older individuals, living with communicative and physical disabilities, express through an amalgamation of visual art and therapeutic relationships. Though it wasn’t directly art therapy in practice, it allowed me to see what a career in the helping professions involved. Throughout the experience I had to learn to communicate in a completely different manner. Interacting with a group of people with diverse abilities allowed me to grow one of my most transferable skills, empathetic listening. The best way to communicate with people non verbally is to listen to every aspect of their expression; physical, gestural, visual, and verbal. Ultimately I want to incorporate my learned computer skills of statistics and SPSS, my people skills from working several intense customer service and people focused jobs, and my education and passion for psychology to offer my own private practice of Psychological counseling. I plan to do that now by taking as many research assistant opportunities involving the use of psychology in the mean time to get a sense of what it means to actively participate in the field and produce research while gaining on sight skills.