18.

18 – Complete my Introduction to Counselling course.

At the beginning of October I started a ten week course at the University of Warwick called ‘An Introduction to Counselling’. When I signed up I was fairly certain that I wanted to continue afterwards to do the Certificate and Diploma of Counselling, but I thought I should do this course first to make sure. It also meant I could conveniently live at home and commute to the university every week.

When I first signed up for the course and when I got the letter confirming it, I was really excited about it and couldn’t wait for it to start. When I went to the first session (there were 10 two and a half hour sessions, once a week on a Thursday) I was really quite scared about it, but I’m so glad I did it because I really loved it. There were about 20-25 of us who did the course and everyone was absolutely lovely, and the teachers were brilliant. We learnt a huge amount in just 10 weeks – they taught us about the main theories of counselling, and learnt a bit about how they were applied. We did listening exercises and learnt about how to be a good listener, and generally learnt a lot about the process of counselling, as well as what is involved in the actual training. I found it all very interesting, and I also learnt a lot of interesting things about the people who were doing the course wth me. It’s very strange to think that I will probably never see them again.

In order to pass, we had to keep a journal and write about the course every week, which I found quite hard work, but quite enjoyable. We also had to do a little learning statement and read it out in the last session, which was on Thursday. I actually felt really scared before I had to read mine out, but it was a really nice session, just listening to what everyone else had learnt and got out of the course. After that we were given a feedback sheet that said we’d passed, so now I have officially completed it. I feel quite sad that it’s over, but I’m really pleased I did it. I just have to worry about doing the Certificate next.