“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”
- Eleanor RooseveltMy official first entry for the reflective journal. Decided to log my thoughts down in the form of blog entries. Like the flexibility that I can have on the computer where I can insert pictures and links along the way and the time stamp which accompanies the entries which will help me to track my specific thoughts at specific moments in this new beginning..
The programme has officially started. It has been a rather interesting couple of weeks. There has been quite a fair bit of ambivalence. The anxieties of being away from home for potentially the next two years; leaving behind everything that I am familiar and comfortable for the last 32 years. The excitement that brought me here; the exposure and learning of new ideas and skills in an area which I feel passionately about.
So far, things have been on a slow start. Did quite a fair bit of the development of family therapy over the past few weeks. I have to admit that some of the concepts are really way too abstract for me; a person who learns best when ideas can be illustrated through concrete application. I struggled with some of the readings having been out of touch with regular academic readings for an extremely long time.
Some of the models are familiar to me whereas some seem so foreign (and perhaps even difficult to envision them being helpful in reality) that I caught myself being close minded there. I reminded myself that I am here as a student. Having been in a position of relative power to many of my co-workers, I have ran into complacence. Or perhaps, that's just my insecurity talking? My discomfort with knowing that there are things that I do not know enough about? Regardless, I am making a commitment to myself that I will keep an open mind to my learning such that I am able to explicitly explain to myself the strengths and limitations of the different models instead of saying that I do not think that they suit my therapeutic stance.
The class seems to be really supportive so far. The tutors and classmates have been really warm and helpful. Having stayed in Singapore for my entire education journey, it has been an eye opening for me that I am having classmates from all over the world. In fact, the conversations so far have been so enriching that it is one of the things that keeps me excited about the learning I can acquire here. All of us have different professional and personal background and I really look forward to see how this will all look like as we come together as students in an area seemingly new yet not unfamiliar to many of us. What I really appreciate about the climate in the class so far is the seemingly lack of competition. Unlike my previous experiences in the classroom, everyone is sharing knowledge and respecting the different views each brings in. It seems as though we are supporting each other to grow in our respective ways as we embark on this journey together. That definitely alleviates some of my anxieties of being in a foreign land and a minority in many instances.
So far so good! This marks the first entry in my journal. Shall look forward to the last entry in time to come and see how much of this will still be relevant!
