Week One, Over and Done

Hey guys! I have one week of my postgrad education under my belt. Exciting stuff, yes? Yes.
This week has been very interesting and a little challenging. I say it was challenging not in the academic sense, but I feel like I've learned a lot about myself. For one thing, I am very impatient. This program is very...person-centered, in that we're all supposed to focus heavily on our personal development in order to be 'there for' our clients. Since I usually have sort of a low tolerance for anything that is too new-agey, it's been challenging for me not to blurt out "Will you just please teach us how to do this instead of making us talk/think about ourselves and our emotions so G.D. much?!" But I won't. I mean, I'll really try my best not to.

Yesterday was a nice day, though. We had a workshop on the ethics of counselling, and the tutor teaching it was so flipping funny. She also made a lot of sense and made some sort of order out of the chaos that is the ethics of person-centered counselling. She also told this story about Carl Rogers that basically sums up why people go into counselling. When Carl Rogers was little, he was in his cellar and found this old potato that had fallen out of the bag, and it was kind of dried up, sitting on the hard basement floor. It had started to sprout little shoots and was trying to grow in the direction of the little basement window, so Carl took it and put it outside and recognized that it was trying to be itself despite bad conditions, and that all it really needed was a chance in better conditions to fully be what it was meant to be. Anyway, he thought this was a good metaphor for what counselling can be for some people, and I like metaphors. Go Carl Rogers.

One thing about this course is that it is highly unstructured, and, as an American who is used to counselling being so heavily regulated and thoroughly taught (from what I've seen of my friends who are studying counselling), I am wanting a little bit of structure. The other American and I are developing a reading schedule and will be checking in on each other to make sure we're following it. In any case, it's all very different and it will be interesting to see how things go when I start seeing clients...in 3 weeks. Yikes.

On the other side of the coin, I have started to make some really good friends in my class. A group of us went out after class yesterday. And by 'went out' I mean 'walked downstairs to the pub conveniently located right in the school building'. Yeah, a pub in the school! How British is that? Incredible...Anyway, yes, so we had a few pints and I was looking around the table, and it occurred to me that in our little group, there were people from Africa, Ecuador, Italy, Ireland, Scotland, Brazil, and America, and there were only 10 of us. I also have made a new, potentially very-good friend who is heavily into music and is introducing me to even more obscure British bands and telling me about the good gigs in town. Heaven.

Anyway, things are pretty good here. I have had sort of a hacking cough for a week or so, but it's getting better. If you read my post entitled 'Lemsip and Paracetemol', you'll be happy to know that other people have warned me about Lemsip's addictive power, and it's apparently a well- known thing that it makes you feel craaaazy in the head, so it wasn't just me.

Aww, I have to give a public thanks to Alison--I just got the card you sent. Sooo cute! It's so nice to get mail here! Thanks!

One more thing about the election and then I'll try not to bring it up again--everyone here is so excited about what's happening. A lot of people in class have been watching the debates and talk about it quite a bit. There's this sense of desperation for us to elect Obama. One of my classmates said, "I just feel like you guys have this amazing chance to do this and I really, really hope you take it." And that's how I feel too.

OK, that's enough from me. I miss you all!
xoxo