Monique Rodriguez
graduate psychology student
Hometown: Washington, D.C.
Student status: First Generation college student
I am resilient.
I am encouraging.
I am a believer.
I am a child of God. God is the anchor of my life. I am also a helper and a healer. I don’t mind sharing my personal story if it can help someone. I am very fluid. One of my top five strengths is adaptability. Some people would classify that as being a chameleon. Initially, I perceived being a chameleon as negative, but as I got older, my perception changed. I now realize that being a chameleon is a good thing because I need to be different things for different people. Sometimes I need to be soft. Sometimes I need to be hard. It all depends on the situation.
It's important for me to use my own experiences to help people better themselves.
Everything I do, in some way, has to be connected to helping people. My helping is intentional because I don't want people to experience what I experienced when I needed help. I want to be there for people when they are going through something or when they are trying to recover. It's important for me to use my own experiences to help people better themselves.
I am also very passionate about God. I want everyone to love the Lord. When I am helping people, I don’t want them to see me and praise me for helping them, but I want them to see the God who lives in me and how He is working in the situation. It is important for me to be flexible because God is not going to look the same to me as He does to someone else. He presents himself differently to everyone.
I learned, and I am still learning that what works for me may not work for everyone else. I put a lot of energy into trying to make people understand my views and, in retrospect, I realized that this was not necessary. I missed out on learning about other people because I was so focused on making sure that everyone understood me. It’s more interesting to learn about other people because if that person has a need, I can help fulfill it. There’s more than one part to me and it’s a nice benefit to have different parts of me being used.