4/11/07
Today I emailed my Fall 2007 schedule to Dr. Ancis and Ron Herndon. Yesterday I met with Dr. Chung and accepted a Teaching Assistantship for the Fall and Spring semesters. I will be teaching the CPS2500 class. It will be the first time I will actually teach an undergraduate class and hope this will open doors to many other opportunities.
Review of Events:
It has been a very exciting period of my life. About two and a half years ago (rough estimate) after talking with Dr. Eldridge, Vanessa and I talked about the possibility of me pursuing a PhD degree with the hopes of me teaching online and living in Brazil. Our idea was that I could work part time teaching online and the remaining of the time to minister in Brazil.
After this conversation I started to look into a number of online PhD. degrees. I looked into Walden University, Capella university and a few others. After looking into the APA website, I realized that they had a list of Accredited PhD programs and that even though online programs were regionally accredited they were not APA accredited and consequently unable to get a Psychologist Licence. This information caused me to look into a number of APA approved programs and come down to a few that I liked the most. They were, Miami University, New York University, Georgia State University, Tennessee State University, and a few others.
During the 2005 Spring Break Vanessa and I served in Sarasota Florida and really enjoyed to be around the Brazilian community there and realized that it would not be so bad to attend school in Florida, due to the large concentration of Brazilians in that area. Returning from Florida we stopped in Atlanta, GA at the Rob's home. They introduced to us the Church and the Genesis Counseling Center and informed us that Atlanta also had a large Brazilian Population. It ended up being the perfect match. Georgia State University had a great focus on Multiculturalism, and was located in a area which the Latino population was growing rapidly.
The application process was very long and stressful. I first applied to the Ed.S. program in Professional Counseling. I had a low GRE 880 and my hopes of getting into the Ph.D were very low because of it. Required minimum GRE for Ed.S 900 and Ph.D 1000. The hand of God was through out this process by allowing me to enter both programs with the same GRE. During the application period I got very interested in the Ph.D program at University of Georgia and applied to that program too. It was very discouraging because I was not even called to interview at UGA. My hopes of getting into the GSU program were 0. But God's hand continued to be in the whole process and I was called to interview at GSU and was placed as the first alternate for Dr. Ancis. Needless to say I received the call of acceptance on April 5th around 8:15pm. I also received the following email:
Congratulations, Douglas! You have been accepted into the counseling psychology doctoral program at Georgia State University! For the first year, you will be provided with a GRA either teaching or assisting me with research, or both, a $2000 stipend and tuition waiver. Please let me know if I can answer any questions and whether you accept the offer. We are very happy to be able to extend this offer to you and think you would make a fine candidate for doctoral work.Sincerely, Dr. Ancis
On April 10th I send the following thank you note:
Dear Dr Cravens, Johnson, Finton, and Morris. I hope this note finds you well. I am writing to thank you for your letter of recommendation, and to inform you that I was accepted into Georgia State University's Ph.D program in Counseling Psychology. Thank you for your help,support, and guidance. I thank God for the blessing of having you as a mentor. At the moment, it looks like I will be teaching an undergraduate class, participating on research projects, and working full time on the degree. My hope is to finish the degree by May of 2011.I hope to visit Henderson in the near future, and if possible I would love to see you and thank you personally. Again, thank you. Douglas Ribeiro

In concluding today I want to say that this journal will follow me throughout the program and work as a reminder that God Can Do Anything - Nothing Is Impossible to God.