He-llo!

Well, it's Friday, and I am relieved to have a few days off from class!

I was really down on myself after last week's skill's practice, and I received a lot of support because of it (which I really appreciate, by the way). However, today in skills practice, I decided just to be myself, and to treat the process of counselling the way I would normally approach talking to patients on 77, and it was so much better. The other members of my group thought that I was warm and welcoming, which made me feel like maybe I'm not going to be a total disaster. The trick of this kind of counselling, I see now, is just to be myself, with all of my imperfections and experiences. It is truly anti-Freudian in that it adjusts to each individual client, rather than forcing each client to fit into a specific mould...It is a process that I rejected at first, but now see as sort of valuable. I'm learning. I didn't really think that I was, but I am.

In addition to the 'in-class' learning I'm doing, I've also made some great connections with my classmates. For example, one of the other students proposed that we take a group photograph, and that this would somehow allow us to feel more comfortable with each other. One of my classmates and I devised a plan to 'randomly' show up on that day, one of us wearing a chicken suit and the other wearing an egg suit, and pretend that we had just put on a wash, and had nothing else to wear, and had just happened to arrive at class in that way. I guess maybe you had to be there, but it HILARIOUS to us. We laughed until our stomachs hurt. It was a nice moment.

Anyway, Chris and I are about to go and see 'Burn After Reading', which has been out in America for about a month, but is only out today in the UK. I hope you all have a great weekend, and I will write soon!

xoxo