Master's Journey Part 2: My Practicum Story

 Assalamualaikum and salam Ramadhan everyone~

So as some of you might already know, I am currently pursuing my masters degree in Guidance and Counselling. Also, currently I am in my 4th semester out of 5 semesters in total. 1 semester to go!!! Ganbatte dear self!! o(*≧□≦)o 

Man, it was a loooonggg journey, at a short period of time. It doesn't feel THAT long, but it somewhat was full with a dozen of challenges that made it felt like its been yearsssss! 

Last semester (3rd semester) I was required to do my practicum. Okay, so here's the deal with counselling, we have sort of 3 internship:

 1. Practicum 

- Practicum is basically a pre-internship thingy whereby initially students are required to practice conducting face-to-face counselling sessions with clients WITHIN their campus. So, supposedly I only needed to find clients among UPM staff/students and collect around 252 hours whereby we are OBLIGATED to collect 96 hours of ftf session which includes individual counselling, group counselling and career counselling (⌯˃̶᷄ ﹏ ˂̶᷄⌯)ﾟ

2. Internship 1 & 2 

-Right, so this is actually the real deal. For internship, students are required to find an organization (school/institution/office/NGO/etc) for attachment throughout their internship period. Students are given 2 semesters to complete their internship, and this time around, they are required to collect 504 hours whereby 192 hours of ftf sessions. Crazyyy right? Yup, I knowwww...(so be sure to think carefully before you enroll yourself in this programme LOL)

To ne honest, my experience with practicum was sooo scary for me, because it was my first time ever conducting a counselling session FOR REAL. I mean, seriously..when I was in my first and second semester, we did some practice with our friends, but oh boy that was so different compared to our practicum. Okay, first of all, since we are one of those in the "Covid batch", things became different 360° for us. As I mentioned earlier, for practicum, we're required to do counselling WITHIN THE CAMPUS. However, since Covid came, UPM was shut down and nobody was allowed to go in, including us- poor students who coincidently had to do our practicum in that particular semester when Covid existed. 

So, we were 'forced' to find any organization to do our practicum. Meaning, our practicum would be just like how our internship would be later on. We need to find an organization for attachment and do our counselling there FTF! with REAL CLIENTS! Real clients i meant here are the COMMUNITY. Not just the typical UPM students like we used to do before. Jeng jeng jeng...so here's when all my practicum drama started...........（／_＼）

Last semester started on October, so basically our search for a place to do practicum should start before that (because need to deal with the organization for a placement). I started my search quite late because the previous semester (semester 2) was 'hellish' (if you mind) for me. My life was literally upside down.. so yeah. I started looking for a place in early October if I'm not mistaken, and it was to no avail. I mean, that time Covid cases were on and off. Not even one organization I contacted gave me a positive response (they either don't accept outsiders, or they only do E-counselling atm), and man I tell you I was so disappointed and despair to the extent that I felt like dropping that subject for that sem! and not to mention, the whole process of finding a place and getting the cover letter from the faculty was seriously a headache! *sigh*

Not just the students were ask to find a placement outside the campus, but we also need to have sort of a verbal 'deal' with the organization that they WILL ACCEPT us there without an official letter from the faculty (yet). After they agree to accept us (verbally, no b&w yet), then only we can apply for a cover letter from the faculty. It was seriously not making any sense to me and was so unacceptable I swear! So, of course with such demand, I couldn't get a place because the places I asked for needed a cover letter from the uni..so obviously I got rejected. And then time passed by so quickly and it was already December.

After trying and trying to search and approach organizations to accept me, and when I was at the verge of giving up, suddenly a message popped up in one of my masters' programme Whatsapp group. One of my lecturers shared a screenshot of an FB post a person is looking for counselling interns in Darul Quran JAKIM, in Kuala Kubu Bharu. At first I thought like, oh man if I were to apply there, that means I need to be far from home for a while. A lot of preparation needs to be done. And so, since I was desperate and the semester was going to end in 2 months time, I decided to just apply. To cut it short, after another drama that I went through throughout the application process, I was accepted. Alhamdulillah, FINALLY! Okay, so what happened next? Wait for my next entry! It's a long story, you might get bored and fell asleep while reading if I continue my story here! So, stay tuned! o(*>ω<*)o