Experience

 Hi everyone. My name is Wendy Ting (68049). In the previous journal, I have shared with you all about my feeling when the first day I come to Unimas and also the experience when the first day of Basic Helping Skills class. Now, I want to share with you all about my feeling after two months in Unimas,  what I learn in Basic Helping Skills class, and also my feeling after complete the two assignment which is individual and group assignment.

After two months in Unimas, I have adapted myself with university’s life. Now, I can independent and handle everything by myself. For me, university life is quite tough because there are many assignments that we need to complete. It is not easy to complete a group assignment because not every group member will cooperate well and it would be a challenge for me. Besides assignment, university life is also busy with the quiz and mid-term examination. With a busy life, time management is very important so that everything can be done on time. Although it is very tough, I believe that I can do it well if I work hard.

In Basic Helping Skills class, Dr Fah has taught us many useful knowledge that we need to apply in order to become an effective helper. I have learned about Daisy Model, Person-Centered Therapy, Cognitive Behavior Therapy and others useful knowledge during the class. A helper who apply the Person-Centered Therapy should have empathy towards client issues, must respect client and shows congruency. Cognitive Behavior Therapy is a technique that a helper use to help the client overcome their difficulties by changing their thinking, behavior and emotional response. In this theory, someone thinking and behavior has affected their emotion or feeling. During Basic Helping Skills class, I also learn some helping skills. Some helping skills that an effective helper should practice are minimal response, restate, paraphrase, questioning and so on. Minimal response is important because it can encourage the client to talk more. Restate skill is also important in order to let the client know that we are with them. For questioning, there are two type of question that a helper can ask, which are open question and close question. A helper is not encouraged to ask a client a question that starts with why because this will make the client feel uncomfortable. Besides that, we also try to solve a case study during Basic Helping Skills class. For me, the case study can test my understanding towards client issues and I also can learn some helping skills when I solve the case study.

Now, let’s talk about Basic Helping Skills individual and group assignment. From the individual assignment, I have learned many things about myself and everything that happened around me. Through this assignment, I get to know myself better. For example, I know about my own personality, my value in life, strengths, weakness and others about myself. In managing my own behavior part, I learn to control my emotion and think positively. This is because I know that everyone will experience somethings that make them feel down in life and this is a part of our life experiences. Our life quality will be better if we think positively. In the happiness project, I realize that there are many good things that happened in my life every day. When I write the grateful letter, I learn to appreciate the person that has influenced my life and scarify a lot for me. For group assignment, this is my first experience in doing video assignment. Me and my group member work together to think about the script, issue and discuss about how to make a good video. We also discuss about the technique that a counselor should have so that we can make a good video. It was really interesting during the process we record the video because we always laughing during the helping process begin and we need to record the video for many time.

Thank You!