Firstly, I feel I need to address this last academic year. I was upset that I didn’t start the Level 3 last year, but that shouldn’t have stopped me from doing anything productive. I just didn’t feel like I was able to be productive. When the Level 2 course finished in 2018, it was nice to take a little break from studying, but to be honest, I got lazy and complacent, and the short break turned into a long one. Maybe I felt it was one last hurrah of sloth before my self-improvement journey takes my life into the stratosphere. Now I have started Level 3, and I have started taking driving lessons, I feel that things are about to take off. Once the financial burden of owning a car kicks in, I will have to be more frugal and more careful with my money, but then this will be offset by the opportunities that having a car affords.
With that out of the way, my expectations for this course are to gain a further understanding of Counselling by developing the professional techniques required by the role, and to further my relational skills via roleplays in a safe, learning environment. I feel that my understanding of the concepts relating to counselling and the various skills and techniques within it is sound, and I hope that my writing conveys this, however, I do feel I need to work on my roleplay skills more than anything else.
As this course is fundamentally a relational one, interpersonal skills are at its core. Over the course of this last year where I’ve not been in a growth mindset, I’ve not been interacting so readily with customers at work, I was on a bit of a downer. It is a magnificent opportunity for me to interact with other people and develop my interpersonal skills which I must take advantage of. I read a comment somewhere online over the last week relating to counselling training – to summarise, it said that it pays to be congruent throughout all aspects of your life. I think I mentioned this in my work last year at some point, but everything seems to happen for a reason, and everything you learn, see or hear can be threaded together to create a sum that is greater than its parts. Just being back in this learning environment for a few hours has made me realise this. My classmates seem to be a nice bunch, I think I said a similar thing last year – they are all there to learn how to help people, and people that want to help other people are generally nice. I’m looking forward to getting to know them over the course of the year.
I still want to help people; this is still my ultimate goal. I do think I need to get a job in a field related to mental health and social care before too long though, even just volunteering with a relevant charity to start with, just to get a bit of experience.
Overall, it’s great to be back learning. I love the energy of the classroom, and it feels good to be back in the groove of learning again. And as always, this reflective writing exercise has released a lot of negative energy that was circulating in my head. It is therapeutic to write things down and can really help to make sense of any issues you may be having. I don’t think I realised how much I missed writing down my thoughts on a weekly basis!
