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| Our Reunion Dinner - prepared completely by my mom. |
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| All together - smile!!! |
Anyway, the month passed on by - and before I knew it, it was time to come back to NZ. I had missed the first week of the semester - but was ready (sort of) to jump right in to the semester. I should be ready since I had been hanging in around for the past two months (prior to the CNY break) waiting for the start of the semester while getting myself adapted to the environment.
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| This is how I am feeling!! |
School has started - and if I thought I was somewhat prepared for it .. nothing could be further from the truth. On day one - I was already swarmed with reading assignments after reading assignments. Actually, this started before Day 1 since I was already receiving some emails highlighting to me some of the reading assignments that would be required even before I left Malaysia. Gosh! So much reading? Can I do it? Not too sure.
Reminded me of the many occasions when I would tell my students back in Malaysia, when they complained about how much they have to read (i.e., one text book per subject per semester) what we had to go through when I was pursuing my undergraduate degree (and later even more so in graduate school) in the US. It wasn't one required text alone. Usually there were a few, if not several, books per week that needed to be read up. These were followed up with usually reports to be done on our reading, and if not - then at the least discussions in the following week. If you don't do your reading, you would be totally lost in the following week during class lectures/seminars. Here I am back to the same.
Being in the class here also reminded me what I so did not like when I was studying so many years ago. The structure of the writing. Everything is so academic .. how to write, how to cite references, the need for references - journals, books and the like. Oh My God - How I so dislike "structures" as they are so damn confining and so restrictive. It is like living in a black and white world - perhaps with shades of gray from time to time. Dull, boring, and so very uninteresting. And there there are theories!! I thought I had surpassed that part about theories when I started teaching young counselors about counseling. I used to tell them, I too used to hate studying theories and just wanted to get out there and practiced. But now, I realize without theories, there is no foundation to begin our counseling and everything would be like shooting from the hips. So, it makes sense now why theories are important. Oh so I thought I had figured it out. But now? Here we go again - the same feelings as before (from a student's perspective) - theories? And more theories? What the heck for? Can't I just go out there and apply methods, techniques etc?
And worse yet, history. Who the heck cares where this or that came from? It is like I always asked when people talk about the wishes or intent of the founding fathers. That's all well and good. But what does it matter what they intended? Are we to believe their intention foresees way into the future? Perhaps what they came up with was relevant and appropriate for their times. But does that mean those same intention would fit our times? Our needs today? Isn't there this thing called "evolution." We evolve. The world evolves. Our needs change. Don't they? So why spend all that time figuring our and arguing what this person intended when he/she said this or said that? What is important is how we are applying it in the here and now - and if it is helpful? Is it beneficial. If not, let's review and see how we can improve. Not ask why this and why that? Arrrgh!!!! Academic studies. Just not my cup of tea.
For now - doing my best to HANG IN THERE!!!
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| Hang On!!! |
Peace
Syl
Syl
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