AM I GOING TO SURVIVE?

          My first entry would be about what I have been doing and how am I doing after coming to UNIMAS and living life as a university student. Below is the picture of the pillar of strength, my parents who came all the way from Sabah to send me here, safe and sound. 

     

          To be honest it was hard for me to adapt to the first few weeks being here. I was sad, I missed my parents, I missed my friends, I miss the feeling of waking up knowing that I am in my hometown where I can see my friends whenever I want, go out to meet them wherever I want, and what I misses the most is seeing my parents and grandfather and pets every single day. 

          During the orientation week or what we called Minggu Aluan Pelajar, it was very hectic the whole week that I didn't even have time to feel homesick. The only friend that I have during the whole week is my roommate. We woke up at 4:30 in the morning to get ready and assemble with everyone. A lot of things happened during MAP and if there is one thing that I learnt during the week is that I need to learn to accept the difference of personalities between individuals and learn to cope with others as well. We can't expect everyone to like and accept us, and also the other way around. Be flexible, don't change for others and don't try to change others.

          

          After MAP, classes and lectures started and as expected of a first year first semester freshie, finding tutorial rooms and lecture hall is a hard task. I have to come 40 minutes before class because I know I will be lost and I dont want to end up late eventhough I am lost. Going through the first week of lectures and classes, I get to know my lecturers and coursemates. The more I know about my lecturers, the smaller I become. I thought I studied hard enough, but listening to them, their qualifications, I then know how far I am from achieving success in life and thankfully it made me more motivated to strive for success in life.Which is also a good thing.

          My coursemates are all nice and friendly, so making friends with them is absolutely not a problem, even for a self claimed introvert like me. :)) Most of them are from Sarawak, few are from peninsular Malaysia and from Sabah. I was happy when I found out that some of them are from the same matriculation college as I am in Labuan.

          Lastly I wanted to express my gratitude to everyone here for making my degree life in UNIMAS enjoyable and fun. Eventhough sometimes may be hard, well that is life. All I have to do is get up and start running again. I believe what we are today, who we are today, its all with a purpose. 

Be positive, express gratitude, be kind, pray, love, and most importantly, live life to the fullest with purpose. :)

Holga Georgeny -66136-

My past and my future

My name is Katie Lee Jia Mian. My wish during secondary school period was to be a lawyer. This is because my sense of justice is strong. I hope I can help and defense my clients on court. I want to be a lawyer because I am influenced by Hong Kong TV series. I think the law is fair and everyone have the right to be protected by law. Every time I see the unfair things happen I really want to fight for them. My memory is very good so I feel that I have the ability to carry the law. I am a justice people and never done anything to break the law. The condition to be a lawyer is must good at English and History. History is not problem for me because my memory and understanding skill are very high. I always get A for my history and never miss in any exam. My English level is not very good but I work hard on it. My family, teachers and friends encourage me to be a lawyer so I gain a lot of support.

But one day my thought was changed. I have a good friend her result are very good but she did not continue her studies to University. She is facing great family pressure but I fail to give her proper help and advice. I don’t know how to help her because my brain and mind is all about the law but not helping skills. So in thee end she gave up the opportunity to go University for further studies. I feel very sorry because I am helpless as a good friend of her. Since that time, I feel the world needs more people that can help others. She is facing a lot of family pressure and continue to sink but I still helpless.

After that I slowly want to a helper who can helps others. I think many people in this world are very stressed and faced a lot of difficulty but they don’t know where to seek for a help. This world will become peaceful if everyone’s mentality is correct and healthy. So in my opinion the counselor is very important and play important role to help others. So I decided to be a counselor. When I fill the online UPU, I put counseling as my first choice and I really get it. I feel very grateful and I want to work hard to be a successful counselor. In the next four years, I hope that I can achieve my dreams.

KATIE LEE JIA MIAN 66342  

Thank You DR FA

When I first meet the lecturer, I thought she is a kind person. The first thing we do in class is the lecturer calling us to introduce ourselves so we can understand and recognize each other. The lecturer also introduced herself, her name is DR Fatahya Yahya so we call her DR Fa. In the classroom, I can understand the courses taught by the lecturer. I feel very happy in DR Fa class because Basic Helping Skill is not that difficult to understand. The lecturer’s explanation is also very clear thus I can understand easily. I am happy and feel relax to attend DR Fa class because she is very humorous and caring.

During the second lesson she gave us individual assignment to do and explain it to us very well. She also shows the example of individual assignment so we can have better understanding about it. I feel very satisfied after I finish the individual assignment because I plan to hand in on time. After that, DR Fa gave us second task which is group assignment and we are free to group ourselves. I really feel happy because finally can same group with my friends. I and my friends will discuss which day we all are free then we will start discuss about it. It is a bit challenging because need to shoot a short video for the group assignment. It is a bit nervous because this is the first time to shoot a short video. Although it is very challenging but we will try our best to do it.

I want to say thank you to DR Fa for taking care of me when I had serious asthma attack. I have never thought about my asthma will attack so seriously after I take the inhaler. Thank you DR Fa for calling me an ambulance and accompany me in the clinic. Here, I want to thank you to DR Mazlina our program coordinator because she also take care of me. Thank you all the medical staff and friends that take care of me. I really feel touched because DR Fa fetch me back to the student apartment for a rest. I fell very grateful to be her student.

KATIE LEE JIA MIAN 66342

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!

GIVE THE BEST VERSION OF YOURSELF

hello and good morning again to all my lovely readers.. my name sarah afiqah binti mohd shahrin... i am the owner of 65191 matrics number. you may briefly about me based on the previous post.. since the last post is about me trying to adapt in the new environment .. so now i would like to continue my story about my journey of being a trainee counsellors.. people who may not literally know about our course would say like' ahh you are in counselling course, you may not find it hard in your course'.. hmm i would say that i disagree with those kind of statements.. counselling course has its own way of making the students feel hard sometimes.. basically after attending the lectures, it is not easy as people thought it would be.. counsellors is a professional profession, so it means that the input to be a counsellors have to be as many as you can.. because we are dealing with human beings.. each human beings is unique.. they have different character.. the theories that we learn is classes is just a simple guid line for us to make a eefective counselling session..

the first assignmentfor this subject is basically about knowing who yourself are and find the good things in you.. we as a human being always compare ourself to someone else.. but actually , the one who we need to compare is not a stranger thatt we dont every details of their life, instead it is ourself from the past years.. reflects ourself on how much changes you have made from the past years.. how many achievements have you done.. it may seem simple but it has a great impact on how you look at yourself.. the more you reflects the things how much good changes have you done, the more you feel that you are worth it even though others dont think like you.. based on my experience after done the assignment is that, i never realised that i am capable of doing something .. for instance, i feel very hard and not confident to talk in front especially during presentation.. but now, i am capable to talk in front with confident .. to some people it may seem it is just a simple thing but for me , it is my biggest achievement because i have just stepped out of my confort zone and somehow i feel that i beleieve in myself.. the important things that matters is that we should always love ourself because that is the important thing to help us growth in terms of cognitive..

the assignmenr of knowing myself have made me realised some characteristic in me that hold me back from having the confident in myself.. i always think about how people would say about me.. if i do this way , what will they say . if i do that way, how do others react.. basically i am person who always fear of people who dont like me.. i have a fear of people critized me, i rather make things that i dont like to just make them happy because i just want people to like me, it is not that im trying to be fake.. it is just that i think that if people dont like me, i have just made me a bad person.. if someone is mad at me, i will always feel uneasy about it and i try to avoid making contact with them because i just cant face them.. i will always think about why am i doing that way until that person mad at me.. and i will blame myself for making that way.. whilw doing the assignment , i realized that i have a aggressive passive character.. so after some readings, i found some things that i can do to make me being more realistic and i am still improving myself..

the last one about the individual assignment is that about the letter of gratitude.. hmm.. before this i always wanted to thank my mother for always sacrifices many things for me.. but when it come to i want to say it face to face, it is hard for me to say thank you , ibu .. this is because me and my mother not always express our love in soft way like saying i love you and hugging each other.. the words that came out of my mother may seem harsh for other people, but for me it is a sign that she loves me so much.. for instance, she faced a problems, she try to act like nothing happens to her and she will say to me ' walaupun semua orang tak ada dengan ibu, cukupla ada anak anak ibu sebagai semangat ibu.. ibu kuat smpai tahap macam ni sebab kan ada anak anak ibu' .. she tries very hard not to cry in front of her children, that shows how strong she is.. i remembers when i was in boarding school , i once called her while i was crying because i think hard to survive because one of my friend is mad at me.. she just said to me' ibu x kesah apa yang berlaku.. yang ibu tahu sarah score je.. belajar tunggang terbalik ke, yang penting score' .. at first i think that she ignored me but at last i understand that she tries to teach me how to be independent because people will not always be there for me when i have problems..

based on the group assignment, it helps me to organised my time very well because there is  lot of group assignemnt that need to be done before the due date.. so time management and the cooperation among group members is the key to complete the assignment.. i also learn that you just have to push yourself harder to give the best version of yourself.. for instance, i really love to sleep.. but i push myself hard by hold myself from sleeping and struggle to complete the assignment ..

NO PAIN NO GAIN

Hello everyone, my name is Wong Suk Hua and my matric number is (68090). Last time I have shared a blog about my feelings after attending my first class and I would like to thank you for taking the time to read my blog. I would also like to thank the friends who have commented on my blog and I really appreciate it.

Today I want to share a blog related to my feelings after finishing the assignment. At first I felt very stressful because there were many assignments have to do. I can feel that I have been complaining too much since entering this university for too many assignments. I'm kind of like to work with the last minute because sometimes I think that making last minute work is very effective, but only sometimes.

I am very happy that I am able to complete this assignment successfully, even thought I still have a lot of other assignments to do. If compared the both assignments, I will choose to do individual assignment because it is easier and the work depends on myself but not for group assignment because it is a group assignment and should have teamwork and team spirit to complete it. I feel very stressful when doing the group assignment because we had to record one video. Me and my group members had to find an idea for it to record the video. Furthermore, we had to shoot the video quickly before the holidays as group members went home during the holidays and doing the rest of the works during the holidays. At that time, I was like ''Oh my God, where are the holidays supposed to be"' when I have to complete the assignment and submit it after the holidays. Recording a video isn't easy actually because they are "NG" sometimes and have to edit it because I'm doing the editing video's part. But praise the Lord for giving me strength for not giving up to finish this assignment even though I was sacrificing my holidays doing the assignment and editing the video. And I believe that, if there are no pain, there will be no gain. Same, if there are no rain, there are no flowers.

Thank you for spending time reading my blog and God bless all of you.

Experiences of my assignment

When I am starting my university life, I experienced a very “terrible” thing that is the assignment. When I officially started my first class, my lecturer gave us an assignment. This made me feel stressed. Although a lot of assignment makes me feel stressed, I still have a lot of ways to decompress myself. One of the ways is I will listen to music. Music is very important to me. Music will make me relax.

Although some of the assignment will make me feel stressed, when I first time heard from Dr.Fa about our basic helping skills' assignments，I think that this course of the assignment is easy to complete. I think this assignment is very interesting. It is because the individual assignment is about telling about myself.  After completing this assignment, I seem to know myself better. Through this assignment, I realized my shortcomings. For example, I easily feel angry with my family. I easily feel pressure and I hardly make decisions about important things. This makes me want to change myself to become a better person. In addition, through this assignment, I had learned to be more grateful because there is a part of this assignment is need to write down 3 good things happening in each day. This makes me learn to be grateful for everything in life, whether it is good or bad. If something bad it happens, people should be grateful, because, through these bad things, we can learn some lessons from it. If something good happens, then we should be grateful and cherish everything that we have. Furthermore, one part of this assignment is that I have to write a letter to the person who has been a really positive influence in your life and that you feel really grateful for so I choose to write to my father. I rarely express my love and gratitude to my father. Through this assignment, I finally wrote a letter to tell my father what I wanted to say to him. I really enjoyed this individual assignment.

Our group assignment also is very interesting. It is because this assignment is to conduct a live helping session in 3 people in a group. Through this live session, we can try to demonstrate the skills, techniques, model, and theory that they have learned in class to counsel a client. I think through this assignment, we can make ourselves more skilled in applying those coaching skills. Although we have made some mistake when we are in live session, we also can learn from those mistakes and constantly improve from mistakes. It is because I believe that counselling is the course that needs us always do practice like group session or individual session to improve our “level” of counselling.

SALLY TCHEE ZHIN HUI (67625)