In the Fanuchånan 2023 Commencement, at 2 p.m. on Sunday, December 17, at the Calvo Field House, nine prospective graduates are expected to receive their Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. 

One of them is Josiah Gabriel Cruz Mesngon, a Notre Dame High School grad who initially went to Lasell University in Massachusetts. The pandemic led him back home, to Guam, and the University of Guam. 

As he saw the social problems on the island, he took an interest in learning more and understanding how people think and the way they behave.

This curiosity led him to choose psychology as his major. 

“I want my skill set to be in the mental health field,” Mesngon said. 

“I want to work with issues in the local population and see what are the issues that we’re dealing with. We're seeing quite a bit of social issues … a really high incarceration rate, there's a lot of domestic violence, and so the initial part of solving those problems is understanding the decisions people are making, the way they behave, and what’s causing (our community) to get to the point where people are committing crimes,” Mesngon said. 

He plans on working for Guam Behavioral Health is applying to the Master of Science in Clinical Psychology at UOG. This commencement, two UOG graduate students are graduating with a master’s in clinical psychology. 

Mesngon also wants to become part of conversations about programs that help families care for children and adults on the autism spectrum. He was partly motivated to be a professional in the behavioral health field because of the struggles he saw in local families that needed help providing for the daily living of loved ones on the autism spectrum. 

The mentorship he received came from a team effort at UOG.

Each of his instructors taught a different aspect of psychology, he said, “and so, you learn a little bit from everybody.”

Like many college students there are times when challenges arise.

Mesngon got through his share of struggles by applying a certain mindset.

“To be successful at learning and to be successful in college, you have to want to learn first, and get your degree second. You have to envision that you're not necessarily there for the piece of paper or the grade. You’re there because the information that you learn is going to make you better at what you want to do.”