Student Spotlight: Michelle Combines Interests in MSNCHP Program

Michelle Miller, an ND student who is also a peer advisor for the Office of Admissions, answered questions at the KING-5 Healthy Living Expo.

We all know the expression "follow your heart" and Joseph Campbell's famous instruction to "follow your bliss." But it takes a special person to really do that. It isn't easy to tolerate the uncertainty that arises from letting our deepest, and sometimes newfound, interests drive our decisions. But Michelle Miller, a student in the Master of Science in Nutrition and Clinical Psychology (MSNCHP) program, has done just that. The winding road she has traveled has led her many interesting places, finally culminating in the Bastyr program where her old and new passions have converged.

Michelle's interests have included child psychology, ecology and environmentalism, teaching, nutrition and health, and studying the world's cultures. As each passion appeared in Michelle's life, she followed it, and as time passed, it became a beautiful mosaic. It started making sense.

But even before she knew exactly where things would lead, Michelle followed her heart anyway. This confidence could be credited to her uniquely supportive upbringing. "I never felt unimportant," says Michelle. "I always felt incredibly important to my parents. They also valued childhood and youth — they valued life and being able to enjoy life, and they impressed upon us that you can do anything with it."

This foundation set the stage for her to follow her interests in a mix of academic subjects and adventures that a less sure soul wouldn't dare. It also planted the seed for her first love: children. Michelle wanted to work with children ever since she can remember. The oldest of three siblings, she naturally became the babysitter, and it wasn't long before she added daycare worker and nanny to her child-care resume. "Kids have always been in my life," she says. "I think working with kids and having a role in a child's life is one of the most important jobs in the world." You could also say that she inherited this passion. Her mother is an elementary school teacher and her father worked with teenaged moms at a social services agency.

As part of a high school career project, Michelle did some research and decided she wanted to become a child psychologist, possibly working with autistic children. Staying true to that goal, she enrolled at Western Michigan University to study psychology, with intentions to pursue a doctoral degree in psychology.

But she soon discovered new interests that took her beyond child psychology. In her sophomore year of college, Michelle spent a semester abroad in Malaysia. Living in such a different culture was nothing short of life-changing. "I was taken outside of my comfort zone and it opened my eyes to the incredible diversity both in culture and lifestyle that exists outside of the world I was familiar with," she says. She particularly felt awakened to the importance of environmental issues. "I realized the impact of our behaviors and how they can affect everything including global climate change," she says. "I watched rainforests be decimated to put up cattle ranches," she says, "and I saw the damage to the environment that occurs because people want everything the Western world has." She promptly became a vegetarian to reduce her own impact on the environment.

So, when she returned to the United States, she added another bachelor's degree to her psychology degree: environmental studies. She also added a minor in world literature. Her outlook on life continued to broaden as she studied these subjects.

After graduating, she immediately enrolled in the Masters Environmentalist Program Masters of Science in Environmental Science, with an emphasis in human ecology, at Washington State University (WSU). In this program, Michelle studied how environmental toxins affect reproduction. This was exciting because it merged her interest in children with her interest in ecology. "I was really into it," she says. And, to help pay for school, she took a job as a teacher's assistant in the Introduction to Environmental Sciences class. Although she had never planned to become a teacher, it wasn't long before she realized she'd developed another passion. "I loved doing it," she says. "I was really surprised."

After graduating from WSU, Michelle moved to Portland, Oregon to take a job at a reproductive biology lab. The job was interesting, but she wasn't comfortable doing animal research and she lacked passion for the work. "It's important for me to do something I really believe in," she notes. "I have always maintained an idealistic notion of having a positive impact on the world."

So, she left that job and took a part-time job teaching environmental science, nutrition and biology at a community college for a year and a half. However, even though she loved teaching, she still felt like there was something else out there for her.

She considered a master's in teaching, but she also was intrigued by a friend who had an acupuncture degree from Bastyr University. She visited Bastyr University's website and stumbled upon the MSNCHP program. "I'd always been interested in nutrition and health, and the counseling part really made sense to me," she says. "I don't think you can just talk about food — there's so much more to it." The program fit perfectly with her interest in prenatal nutrition and her past work involving chemicals toxins and their effects on developing fetuses. "I would just be applying it in a slightly different way," she says.

She decided to enroll at Bastyr, and she has not regretted it. "I really like the holistic nature of the school, with everyone working together — naturopathic doctors, acupuncturists, and it really ties into environmental science — looking at the big picture and how everything ties together," she says. If there's anything she's learned during her travels and her studies, it's that everything is interrelated. "You can't affect one thing without affecting the other," she says. "Where you are nutritionally affects where you are emotionally, and vice versa. Stress messes up the digestive system and your mood is affected by nutrition," she says. She likes the idea of one day working in an integrative clinic, to keep that integrative focus.

She has been very happy with the faculty in the program. "I've had some fabulous instructors," she says, "and they're really looking out for our best interests." Yet, it's not as if the program has been easy. "It's a challenging program, but it's been good. I've learned a lot about myself," she reflects, now in her second year of the three-year program. She took a quarter of Group Therapy Lab, during which she acquired a lot of insight about herself. "When you are doing counseling, you have to know what's going on with you — you really have to look into yourself a lot," she says. She's also gained a lot of counseling skills through her clinical experience at Bastyr's teaching clinic, Bastyr Center for Natural Health. During one of her quarters, she counseled someone with stage-four cancer. "It was intense," she says, "It was incredible, and it reinforced my decision that I want to do this."

In the Bastyr program, she is learning to counsel others and to address the many different sides of mental and emotional health, including the impact of the environment on developing fetuses, the effect of foods on mental health and how our mental and emotional states drive our food choices and related behaviors. Her experiences in the program have helped to deepen her appreciation of her own upbringing. "Now, in doing counseling and talking to other people," she says, "I realize it was precious, and that I was really, really fortunate. Ultimately I always felt so safe and secure. I am realizing, more and more, how detrimental it can be when people are deprived of that."

In keeping with her upbringing, she tries not to deprive herself of life's joys, even while in the program. She finds time to enjoy the great outdoors in the Northwest region. "I like to do anything outside. It's one of the reasons I love this area," she says. She also enjoys cross-country skiing, hiking, and running half-marathons. She takes some time for pleasure reading and spending time with friends, including her boyfriend who lives in Olympia, Washington.

Next year, Michelle will be applying for a practicum at a mental health site. She would like to work with children, adolescents and families, possibly dealing with issues related to childhood obesity. Reflecting back on the winding path that has led her to where she is now, she says, "I don't have any regrets. I've taken a different path than most of my close friends, but it's been full and educational — to say the least — both in and out of school."