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| Robert Berridge fulfills lifelong calling to become a counselor after a 35-year teaching career. |
At the end of a 35-year teaching career, Robert Berridge, MA ’10, SEHS ’82, saw, like many approaching retirement, a chance to chase long-awaited dreams. But instead of slowing down, he became more ambitious.
He went back to school and has since embarked on what he hopes will be another 35-year career — this time, in
counseling.
Berridge, 63, always knew he wanted to be a teacher or a community counselor, he says. He chose teaching initially because it offered greater chances to experience the world beyond rural Michigan.
He taught men at a maximum-security prison for the criminally insane in Lima, Ohio; was a student teacher at an international school in Majorca, Spain; and instructed Inupiaq Eskimos north of the Arctic Circle and Hanwitchen-Athabaskan Indians along the Yukon River in Alaska.
“I did well because I really cared, and they understood that,” recalls Berridge of working with the inmates. “I was the only teacher who never had a student miss. I had lifers who came.”
That sense of being invested carried through the rest of Berridge’s teaching career, particularly in Alaska, where even as a young outsider he became the person everyone looked to whenever something traumatic happened.
“It soon became evident I’m very comfortable with problems and being nonjudgmental,” says Berridge, who never completely let go of his dreams of becoming a counselor.
“I knew that when I turned 60 years old, I wanted to get my degree and then start my own private practice, which I’m doing,” Berridge says. “I got the degree just a month before I turned 60. It’s just wonderful when you make your dreams come true.”
Having earned degrees from Western Michigan University and Wayne State University, Berridge says he knew how important it would be to choose the right school and was willing to go wherever he needed.
“Oakland University was the only one that hit on a lot of points,” he says. “Nothing was a close second.”
While at OU, Berridge was inspired and impressed by how Assistant Professor of Counseling Mary Rose Day, Ph.D., communicated her passion for counseling.
“She was so authentic in her message: ‘Be real. And if real doesn’t feel nice to someone, that’s OK,’” Berridge recalls. “She would say, ‘You are an expert, but never an expert on them. You always keep checking: you reflect; you ask.’”
Berridge added those tools to those he’d gathered throughout his teaching career.
Today, Berridge and his wife, Carolyn, a counselor and social worker, run St. Clair Counseling in a historic 1844 farmhouse in downtown St. Clair, where he specializes in counseling children and adults, couples and people struggling with addictions or grief.
Berridge finishes most sessions by asking clients to rate the session and to say one word to describe how they feel about it.
“I can’t tell you how many people use the word ‘home,’” he says — and that’s always a good place to be.
— By Cara Catallo