Last semester, BSM welcomed a new counseling intern: Mr. Jake Ingalls. Ingalls graduated from BSM in ‘08 before attending St. John’s University. This semester, however, Ingalls will be returning with a more intense and regulated schedule.

Ingalls graduated from St. John’s with a degree in business, but soon found that wasn’t what he wanted to do. “It was kind of a circuitous route. After I graduated from college, I did a volunteer program in Newark, New Jersey where I taught and served as a mentor and a tutor for a school called St. Benedict’s Prep out there. I really liked it but I didn’t really enjoy the teaching aspect of it so much. I really liked the relationships I was able to form with the students,” Ingalls said.

Last semester, Ingalls was also interning; not much has changed besides the time commitment. “This semester it’s pretty much the same thing. I just have to basically accrue 700 hours of internship and practicum in order to finish my Master’s degree and get my license for the state of Minnesota… Last semester I only needed to do 100 hours but I had the opportunity to get extra experience and I feel like that was a good idea… I was kind of able to fill in when they needed me last semester as well,” Ingalls said.

In addition to working in the counseling department, Ingalls also coaches football and speech. He finds the connections he makes with these students help him in counseling as well. “The duality of the relationships, I’ve found it to be helpful. Having the rapport with some of these kids, they feel more at ease talking to me because they know me. They know that I’m not going to judge them,” Ingalls said.

Having graduated from BSM, Ingalls finds some parts of BSM are harder to adjust to. “I would say the weird thing is working with teachers that I had when I was a student here. I still feel weird calling some of them by their first names and stuff,” Ingalls said.

Ingalls is very excited about this upcoming semester and getting to form connections with students. “There’s a lot of cool stuff going on, especially with counseling. The juniors have their ‘Building Your Future Day’ coming up which is going to be a lot of cool interesting information for them, kind of really starting the college process. I always really like finding out where students are going to college, where they decide to go. That Friday in May, that’s always something I look forward to,” Ingalls said.

Looking further ahead, Ingalls wants to focus on getting his masters and then finding a full-time job counseling. “I want to be a school counselor somewhere. Ideally coming back here to BSM would be a dream. [It] would be the best possible scenario. That sometimes doesn’t happen, so I’ve got to be ready and to take a job anywhere that’ll have me,” Ingalls said.

Ingalls can be found in Dr. Jeff Steffenson’s office Wednesday afternoons and Thursdays as well as in the College and Career Center any other day.