I am starting to get pretty anxious about my first assignment due in by 15th  December. As I have a personal tutorial today I thought I would deal with my anxiety by taking some time out to prepare for it by working out my main concerns and getting more organised. 

The assignment is called a professional log and it involves doing a sort of ‘mini research project’ based on a personal log we are meant to keep during the year.  We have to link the three aspects of our course: theory; skills practice from our ‘triad work – sort of like role playing but dealing with our real issues; our placement work with real clients; our personal development work experienced in our special group work; and insights gained from our compulsory personal counselling sessions.  All this has to become a coherent 3000 word piece that makes sense to the examiner and accords with his /her  experience of us as students.  We have to discuss about our strengths and weaknesses, learning gained from both successes and failures in our clinical work and our interactions with peers.  So you can see why I am pretty terrified – there is no hiding behind glossy words!  We have to be pretty open and robust.  The last time I submitted a written piece was May  at the end of my first year so my assignment writing muscle feels quite rusty. One of the reasons I wanted to write this blog was to exercise it a bit.

I do feel a bit better now I have read all the course handbooks (some bits for the first time), sorted out all my notes including downloading all the lecture notes from the tutors, and dug out my last assignment with the feedback from this tutor. One great advantage of reading the handbook  was finding extensive notes about the assignment. No wonder the tutors keep going on about reading them!  Now I ‘just’ need to make sure I cover all the bits required, and block in sufficient time slots to work on it without getting myself into a panic. I cannot stay up all night to write an essay – I need lots of thinking time and I always end up doing about five or six drafts.  I always have to set the deadline at least two days early so I don’t panic about the computer blowing up, the printer running out of ink and/or paper or me coming down with a deadly virus. I think that all goes back to the days of doing my first degree while on call for home births, and running a household as a single parent!

I have a busy rest of the week with rellies staying tonight and tomorrow and another university  open day on Saturday.  If you recall, at the last one I made between 5-600 cuppas so I wonder what Jess, the boss has in store for me this time – watch this space!