What Are (First-Year) Classes Like in Graduate School for Counseling Psychology? (During a Pandemic)
Okay, so you’re organized, you read your syllabus and did your readings. Now you’re waiting for your classes to actually start. What are classes like? What should you expect out of your first semester?
Of course I can only talk about my own experience at a somewhat-unconventional school, starting graduate school online during a pandemic, but your classes might go something like this:
You might receive an email to attend your Zoom lecture about 15 minutes before class starts. At my school we get a new link with a new meeting ID and password for every single class. These are sent only to our official .edu email addresses and it is not recommended to use email forwarding as you may not receive the link in time.
At my school we change our Zoom names to reflect our preferred pronouns, so my name looks like “Jessica Taillieu (she/her)”.
Expect to have your camera on for all or most of the lecture. Of course, feel free to turn your camera off briefly when you need to sneeze, blow your nose, or get up to do something. Keep yourself muted unless you are the person talking. It’s polite to nod along and show some interaction during lecture.
In my opinion, it’s also polite to look presentable so I always make sure to get ready, do my hair and makeup and wear the same clothes I would wear in any business casual setting. However, if you want to wear a T-shirt and hoodie/flannel to class, you would definitely not be the only one. Most people in class just dress comfortably.
Every professor is different but the general structure will probably go something like this for each class: The class does a “check-in” where everyone goes around saying how they feel today, or we do some other type of grounding/meditation exercise to get everyone ‘in the moment.’ The professor may do some lecturing, perhaps answering questions from the readings that came up or talking about things left over from last class. You may be split up into dyads (pairs) or small groups to discuss the readings in breakout zoom rooms. The class then comes back together to talk about what was discussed in the breakout rooms. Usually around halfway through class there will be a break (some professors will do longer breaks halfway through class, some will do shorter ones more often). For the second part of class, there may be another lecture or question/discussion period, or you may be broken up into dyads again to do some type of experiential therapy exercise. Then the class will come back together again and discuss how that went for everyone. If there’s time, there might be a “check-out” where everyone in the class goes around and says how they are feeling again, now that the class is over.
Expect to do a lot of sharing. While you are doing your readings for the week, write your reactions to the material (whether it was physical, somatic, emotional, behavioral, or anything else) in the margins of the page or in a different color text if you are typing your notes (I use bright orange). You can refer back to these when it comes time to discuss the readings in class and mention how you felt while you were reading a particular section, or what reactions or questions you had. Make connections to other readings from past weeks, different courses, your personal life or things happening in pop culture. In a future post I will discuss my note-taking strategies and apps.
Discussing the readings is not about proving to the professor and class that you did what you were “supposed to do” by repeating the material back. It’s about moving beyond the reading and applying it to real life, seeing other people’s viewpoints on it, and being critical of it. There’s no tests or pop quizzes on the readings themselves. You are reading them for your own sake, to learn and grow as a therapist. It’s assumed you are in graduate school because you want to be there, you want to read this kind of stuff and discuss it.
How classes go will depend quite a lot on both your individual professor’s style and the course’s content. Although most are probably a blend of the two, your courses are either going to be mostly experiential, or mostly theory.
In an experiential course, the grading is probably going to be done on a pass/fail basis. The content of the course is going to focus more heavily on trying things out in class and being present in the moment. You will most likely be asked to do reflection papers discussing how you are personally relating to the course concepts. These are a blend of an academic paper and a thoughtful journal entry.
For example, this semester I am taking a course called “Therapeutic Communication.” It focuses on how we communicate as therapists and how we can work on sharpening our therapeutic instrument (our empathic presence and sense of self in the here and now). Every week we split the class into dyads and work on our listening skills. This means each person in the pair takes about 15 minutes to be the “client” and talks about something that’s on their mind. (Something that’s not too personal or heavy a topic, but that still has a small emotional charge for them that they would like to work on.) The other person acts as the “therapist” and listens, offering their empathetic presence. Then we switch roles and the “client” becomes the “therapist" for 15 minutes. Each person gives a little positive and constructive feedback about how the therapist did and how they might improve for next time. Although it can be really difficult giving your classmates negative feedback, remember that it’s something they genuinely need to know for their future career. Likewise, try not to take it personally when you are the one receiving feedback. You don’t have to accept everything the other person said if you don’t agree. Just take anything that is helpful for you and continue on.
In a theory course, you may still be doing some experiential activities, but more class time will be devoted to lectures and discussing the readings. Grading will probably be done by letter grade. You may have more papers or the final paper may be longer, more academic and less reflective.
For example, this semester I am also taking a course on psychodynamics (Freud/Jung-inspired psychology). This class is mostly theory-based, meaning it is lecture-heavy and we do not practice therapy exercises with each other. However, there is still an experiential component in the sense that we are asked to do relate the class material to our personal lives and discuss our reactions to the class material in the final paper.
Most courses will blend theory and practical experiences together but mostly lean one way or the other. In my school, all courses are taught by faculty that also maintain a private practice so our professors are a great resource for asking any questions we have about life as a therapist. Whether it’s relevant to the course material for that week or not, all of them are happy to answer questions that come up about dealing with clients and their own experiences in the field.
If you are on the journey to graduate school for counseling psychology, you can look forward to being surrounded by classmates and faculty that are just as interested in psychotherapy as you are. Your first semester is likely to be a very special time of deep personal exploration and making new connections with interesting people. I would highly recommend taking 15 or so minutes to write a short journal entry after every class. You can note what you were thinking, feeling, talking about and doing in class that day, talk about how the material is hitting you, topics that interest you, what you talked about in your breakout rooms or anything else that’s on your mind. Just write in a loose, free-flowing style and let your thoughts pour out onto the page. Think of these journal entries as useful raw material for future papers. They can be drafts for your reflection papers, a great source of ideas down the road, a way to clear your mind after a lively discussion, or simply a record of memories that you might like to look back on later in life.