Students at present cope with myriad problems at home and school, including abuse, drug use, and violence. Jane Long provides a variety of services to her student charges. As a social worker in the federally-funded GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) program, Jane provides academic counseling and individual counseling to students from seventh grade through high school. She keeps in contact with parents to make sure that students are up to date in their progress. Occasionally, she also undertakes family counseling and crisis intervention.

The most important consideration for a career in social work, Jane says, is a certain vocation. "What are your values in a job?" she asks "It's more important for [you] to want to [and] to be able to help others, versus needing job security or lots of money." While at Hamilton she did volunteer work with HAVOC and served dinners in Utica. Jane's Psychology major helped prepare her for a job in counseling. Originially, Jane planned to get a degree in some kind of psychiatric medicine. However, "[during] senior year it hit me the number of years of school left," she says dryly, "and my senior thesis advisor was very helpful in helping me find other options."

After graduation, Jane got a job as a case manager as she worked towards her graduate degree in social work. The job kept her very busy--she had over 20 cases at any one time. She also interned at a psychiatric inpatient unit. This internship was particularly important, she reveals, because it helped her to decide what kind of counseling work she wanted to do. "I enjoyed working in the hospital," she admits, "but I could tell that that environment wasn't what I wanted. So I looked in newspapers for an opening in a school or a small clinic." She applied, and got the job, at the Queens Child Guidance Center.

While Jane enjoys her job, she would love to work with young children and families in the future, hopefully at a community clinic center where she can be more in touch with therapy in her work.