study counselling

..and it’s on again! Coaching doesn’t seem to be going particularly well for me at the moment, for various reasons I can’t be arsed to go into (some under my control, some not), and it seems to me lately that actually making a living from it is harder than everyone seems to make out when you train. Finding coachees who’ll commit (not to mention pay) is tricky and time consuming, and that’s demoralising, and a demoralised coach is a bad coach. Making a career out of it seems, hm, a bit of a pipe dream at this moment.

But I still want to work with people’s minds, and I still want to help people get happy. So I made a snap decision last week to go back to college and study Counselling Level 3. I enrolled halfway through the first class, that’s how snappy the decision was (although it wouldn’t have been quite that snappy had the college ever received my original application which I sent two months ago, intending to make up my mind about whether or not to take up the place once I’d been offered it ::sigh::).

It’s a 30-week course, one evening per week, and it looks like it might be quite heavy going both in terms of workload and self-discovery. But I think a bit of structure is just what I need to help me feel like I actually am moving forward with my personal and career development, and as I don’t seem be getting on that well with creating my own structure, the course might function as a kind of exoskeleton. I’ve felt rather stuck recently, careerwise, and while it would take another three years to fully qualify – two of which would mean one full day at college each week – this is at least a step nearer to the field I eventually want to make my career in. Counselling isn’t really exactly what I want to do, but it’s a lot easier to find steady work as a counsellor than as a coach, and would give me a foundation upon which to build a coaching business.

I tried to enrol at Gateshead College on Friday. Astonishingly, I missed the enrolment date – by one day. Apparently it was their “Big Event”, but they hadn’t gone out of their way to let anyone know about it, like, you know, telling anybody or anything, or putting it on the website. Grrr.

Anyway, I was supposed to call a woman this morning to see if there was any chance of an interview for the remaining five places, but over the weekend (which was filled with the 43T Euro meetup, which was faaaantastic and will be covered later) I had a think, and I’ve decided – again – to put this on hold for now and study the life-coaching diploma instead. Reasons:

1. It will get me qualified in something quicker, and I’ll therefore be able to start earning from it sooner.
2. It’ll probably be less labour intensive, which is important right now because I need to be concentrating on finding more permanent and suitable work for my aims, skills and personality.
3. I am, frankly, more interested in it.
4. I’m not sure I want to commit to a year-long counselling course when I’m not really convinced that I want to stay in this town any more. The coaching diploma is online and can be done from anywhere.
5. I’m feeling somewhat morose and gloomy at the moment, and I think that studying something so kickass will… kick my ass.

I haven’t got time to sit around and wait to see if the council will fund this. I think I’m just gonna bite the bullet, book it, and pay for it myself. When I qualify, it will pay for itself within about ten hours of work anyway.

Am I being really impetuous and silly? Anything anyone wants to point out to me, please feel free. I really want to do this but I made such a snap decision on it I’m not sure if I’ve got all the angles covered and as we all know, it’s all about the angles.

The September intake is full. My friend rang me and told me. Now I’ll most likely have to wait till January.

I’ll probably fill in the time with the first part of my life-coaching diploma…

which I have just found out is also marked, in part, by the woman I had a go at in an earlier entry.

Double shit.

Hopefully she’ll respect me for speaking my mind.

_Shit.

I have to have an interview before they let me on the course. Guess who’ll be conducting it? That’s right, this woman. The one I had a massive massive go at a few weeks ago.

Shit.

..to go on and study Level 3. I’m probably going to enrol this afternoon. It’s a big commitment, a 30-week course, but I need to move on, get my career shifting in the direction I want, and this is one way to do it.

..but purging my list. I’m learning a lot, not least that I probably don’t want to be a counsellor, but I’m gaining skills left right and centre, and it’s good to keep my studying hand in.

My college course, the start of which was moved from February to March because it was so oversubscribed they had to start another class up, has been attended so far by only three of the 16 people that were meant to be in the group! The college can’t justify paying the tutor for the three of us dedicated students to have what amounts to almost-personal tutoring, so we’re being moved to Thursday’s class. We’re on week two, they’re on week five, so the three of us are gonna have a fair amount of catching up to do. I’m not too concerned about catching up learning-wise, as we did far more in Basic than we were meant to, but I’m a bit worried about how I’m gonna get all the coursework done in time to provide actual proof that I’ve learned it.

Plus I’m a bit annoyed cos with it being on a Thursday night it impacts on another goal here. How inconsiderate.

Having expereinced what it is like to suffer with anxiety and depression. I really want to be able to give back and contribute to society. I want to gain a councelling qualification so that i can have the ability to help people on a proffesional basis. I am also going to setup in the future a business which incorporates NLP, life coaching, councelling and self- help systems so that i can offer sessions or internet tapes and courses and information regarding how to lead a happier and healthier life & how people can help themselves through conditioning and awareness. I want to be able to help people unleash the resources within themself, much like anthony robbins has helped me do! I’ve found out to go on an open learning councelling course it’s £40 a month, which is reasonable to learn. You get a certification at the end of it also. I am also looking into occupational therapy! and getting HPC registration.

I just enrolled on Level 2. It’s three hours at college on a Monday night, plus 9 hours of directed home study. God knows how I’m gonna fit it in, and it’s rather trashed the idea of Monday night bellydance classes with my bro’s ladyfriend, but I think it’ll be a small price to pay.

Well, we still haven’t got our results back from stage one, but I just spoke to my tutor and she says it’s fine to enrol on stage two anyway cos she doesn’t expect any of us to fail (famous last words?). So it’s off to the college I go next week to take the next step, which will no doubt be a lot more hard work. But still, one more step out of my godforsaken unfriendly office and into a role where I’m doing what I want to do.