If he had come of age during a different decade, Michael D. might not have become a counselor, a path that led him to volunteer at Walk-In during his retirement.
But when he was a high school student in Chicago during the 1960s, Michael recalls that “the whole world was revolving around social issues and issues of injustice.”
During the same era that Walk-In Counseling Center was founded, Michael was one of relatively few African-American students at the University of Minnesota. He realized halfway through his second year that his longtime plan of becoming an architect wasn’t for him. He changed his major to social work, became a peer counselor, and the rest is, as they say, history.
After receiving a graduate degree in Educational Psychology, Counseling, and Student Personnel Psychology, Michael started work as a counselor in the General College at the University of Minnesota.
While working there, and at Normandale and Minneapolis Community and Technical College, Michael often referred students to Walk-In. “For many students, it was the only resource they had access to,” he recalls.
Now a receptionist at Walk-In, Michael enjoys being part of a clinic team, participating in the team consultation after the clinic, and attending Walk-In’s training sessions on mental health topics. “It keeps my mind in the professional realm,” he says.
Michael first volunteered as a receptionist at Walk-In in 2021, during another time of heightened social justice activity after the murder of George Floyd. “I realized I wasn’t doing the work,” he recalls. “I had always talked about giving back to Walk-In, so I decided to do it then.”
Michael observes that the mental health field includes few BIPOC practitioners, and that is true of Walk-In’s volunteer corps as well. Though he hopes that will change, he says, Walk-In does a good job of serving everyone who comes, and he does his part. “I do a little sliver of what I did before as a counselor,” he says. When the client arrives, Michael notes if the person is distraught and passes along to the team any information about the client’s reason for coming in.
At a recent in-person clinic, one client recognized Michael from a workshop he had done at a community clinic years before. “He was happy to see me,” Michael recalls. The client, who was African-American, said he had been uncomfortable negotiating the mental health system, but the workshop Michael had done “gave him a foundation to value the therapeutic process. It was a good experience for him.”
In recent years, Michael has become interested in meditation. A few years ago, he heard about a BIPOC meditation group at a local meditation organization, and he started sitting with them. After George Floyd’s murder, the group started to meet more often, and Michael is now a facilitator.
Mindfulness can be helpful when meeting the challenge of running a hybrid clinic, which Michael has been doing for about a year. During Walk-In’s early afternoon clinics, clients may arrive in person or on Zoom, and the receptionists need to coordinate with one another to keep the clinic running smoothly.
Michael continues to savor the moments of connection with the clients. “For someone to say ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ or to come out of session and say ‘What you did was helpful,’ those are the hidden surprises,” he says.
“Walk-In is an amazingly unique place — in terms of the amount of service provided, that it is no-cost and anonymous. And it is a place for professionals at the beginning, middle end of the their careers to interact while they serve the community. Every time I come, I am reminded of how much need exists for the service.”