Well, last night was one of the most stressful nights I have had in a long time! As most of you know, I do group counseling on Tuesday nights as part of my degree here at seminary.

Well, everyone has to go through this grueling experience of being in the “video room”. Everyone dreads it! We all have class right before our counseling and if we hear of someone who has to go to the video room, we offer our condolences and give them a pat on the back!

Imagine with me if you will…..I am in a conference room with my co-counselor and there is a possibility that we can have up to 7 clients last night. Well this conference room has two video cameras in opposite corners of the room. About two rooms down the hall sits my faculty advisor, Ph.D. supervisor, and about 10 counseling students who are in their first semester of practicum watching us as we are videoed on these cameras. So, I was a tad nervous. Oh, and to top it all off, not only were they watching us through the video cameras, but my co-counselor and I had earphones in where our advisor and supervisor could tell us stuff that they wanted us to say.

Well, all in all it went pretty well and we received some very good feedback. We do two hours of counseling and then from 9pm-10pm, we receive “constructive criticism” from all those that were watching us. We did hear a lot of positive things about our session, but we were faced to really take a look at why we said the things we said and what our intentions were for the whole session. It is often hard to take criticism, but the people that gave it to us were kind and generous and also very honest and fair. So, I am glad the experience is over and I learned a lot….but I don’t want to have to do this ever again!!!