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“If we’re growing, we’re always going to be out of our comfort zone.” – John Maxwell
By battiso1 | September 30, 2010
I am continuing to move forward from assignment to assignment learning lots along the way. I said in my last blog that I have a lot going on right now with my school work, this is still true this week, and I am guessing it will maintain this way until the end of the semester.
I have really exciting news. Although, I am sure only I find this is exciting. In my Practicum course that I take along side with my internship, we began mock interviews on Monday. If you haven’t read my previous blogs, you won’t know my extreme fear of going behind the glass mirror and conducting a counseling session while the class, professor, and video camera are all watching. On Monday, Dr. Farrugia asked for volunteers to be the first client and counselor to go. After several minutes of silence I finally volunteered to be the counselor! I felt good about the mock counseling session. I don’t think I had enough time to think about it to get nervous. After the session Dr. Farrugia played it back and stopped the tape every now and then giving advice and asking for class feedback. I found this very helpful and I wasn’t even nervous… well a little, but I was overall okay. That makes me think that I am beginning to gain some confidence in my counseling skills, which is what I find so exciting!
This week in my Family and Couples course we all brought in our rough drafts of our family genograms. We used the class time to go over them and see where we are, to make sure that everyone is on the right track. We also finished a movie we are watching of a counselor using the Family Systems counseling theory. Watching the counselor use the Family Systems theory is definitely interesting and quite persuading to me that it’s a good theory and that I should look more into it. I am a firm believer that your family life and system has an effect on a person’s here and now.
This weekend I am meeting with a family to conduct my family interview, one of the assignments for Family and Couples Counseling course. The interview is a systematic description of a family and an account of my observations. Components of this paper range from decision-making/communication styles, roles, and family of origin issues, to an analysis of the influences of family/school/community collaboration on the student participant’s development, well being, and learning. With that said this should be an intimidating assignment, but overall a great learning experience.
Then next Thursday I am going to an event called Suny Operation Information Day. This is an event held for Secondary School Counselors and Admissions Counselors at the University at Buffalo. There are several workshops going on during this event. In session one, we are able to choose from one of the following workshops; Transcript Review, Apply to SUNY, or an optional Campus-Based Workshop. In session two we choose from one of these topics; Transferability, Emerging Careers or Professions, or an optional Campus-Based Workshop. Reviewing these topics now I think I am going to choose to sit in on the Transcript review workshop in session one. I am leaning towards this one because I think it is important to know how a higher education institution is reviewing their prospective student’s transcripts. With this knowledge I will hopefully be a better asset to the student whom I will be working with. The second session I think I am going to attend the transferability workshop. This sounds like it should be an interesting topic to think and know more about, again this is a topic that I think will help me be more of an asset to the student I work with. But we shall see, I will let you all know the details of the workshops next week!
Topics: Counseling and Human Services | Comments Off
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