About Me
I am Lynette A. Shaw. I’m from Peoria, Illinois – approximately 3 hours outside of Chicago. I’m majoring in Psychology in hopes to become a behavioral psychologist later down the road, and I’m here at Agnes Scott to turn that dream into a reality. Mental Health is a topic I hold close to my heart as it is the center of our productivity, happiness, and overall well being. I plan to start a mental health clinic of my own, where patients can receive therapy, and research can be conducted to further progress this field of science.
This thirst to understand how different cultures and social groups operate originates from my childhood. I was constantly being exposed to new cultures while I’d visit the houses and families of my friends from different cultures. But even social structures such as high school perplexed me with it strange sociological complex and they way adolescents seem to arrange themselves with an entire set of unwritten rules. Sociology and Psychology seemed to come into play everywhere I looked. As an African-American teen, I knew that my everyday stressors and worries might look different from someone else’s who didn’t look like me, and I knew some of the situations I found myself in played a role in my brain development. All these things drew me into wonderful field.
Upon taking the StrengthsFinder test, my results consisted of Empathy, Input, Relator, Communication, and lastly, Individualization. Of my five strengths, I wish for people to see Individualization most in me, even though it’s ironically my last strength listed. I really do feel as if it describes me even better than my zodiac sign. Communication and Individualization sum me up well. But in terms of Individualization, I am good at taking people’s strengths within a team and manipulating those for the betterment of the project. I remember the strange unique things about people and their stories, and mentally store it for later use. But above all, I am an observer, which is probably why I’m going into behavioral psychology. I want to provide therapy, but I also want to conduct research which is why I was so shocked that this test picked up on the Communication, Input and Empathy strengths that I didn’t even realize I had. I just have passion for helping people in situations…I didn’t know that was considered a strength. I believe these five strengths will be essential in the field I am going into, but I can’t wait to work on individualization and make it more pronounced.
