I quite enjoyed my first day of 'work' hahaha :D
it's quite exciting.
when i first went into the classroom, i was greeted personally by my lecturers. hahaa.
there're 23 students in my class, and i'm the youngest (very obviously). the next one youngest is probably 25 or 26 O.o the oldest is 61. half of the class have been teachers before they converted to being full time school counsellors. and everyone has had formal work experience (except for me). it's super interesting :D
but thank God that i can understand the things well.. 'cos they're things i'm interested in! and things which i've done in psychology (my lecturers are mostly psychologists =D)
so yeah.
we spent the first day having orientation (for the first half of the day. boring stuff, e.g. introduction to geNIEus and library orientation. it gets kinda amazing at the things people don't know 'cos they're of an older genderation. think we really take our knowledge of the computer for granted), and the second half having lessons. and to start everything off (and possibly to break any form of ice between all of us), the first (and only) topic was sex.
quite a fruitful discussion.. revisited certain things about the images and covert messages about sex from the media (e.g. an advertisement of Madonna who's fallen on the steps with a half eaten apple in hand to sell some product --> fallen woman --> apple as a symbol of the forbidden fruit --> sin as attractive?), as well as discussions about how we first got our knowledge of the topic, what messages were conveyed, implications, how do we define abstinence (which i thought was pretty good. talking in terms of level of arousel instead of specifically what not to do), certain factors which predispose teenagers (how to define teenagers nowadays when their physical knowledge may supercede their mental maturity) to premarital sex, values about this topic... my group was the youngest group (hahaa. well, it had me:), but i think our group was quite knowledgeable and experienced about this topic 'cos well, this generation tends to be overexposed to things related to the topic). so yup.
i was just sharing with some of the ntu people (when i went to ntu hq) that it's quite sad to watch a video about a girl who is of the same age as me, but has already changed multiple sexual partners (her first experience was at 10 yrs old 'cos she was raped by her mother's boyfriend) she worked at macs for a while, but became a prostitute in the end. she took up drugs. now she's married with 2 kids, but she can't change her profession 'cos she's got no qualifications (she stopped studying since p6) and she can't stop everything at a time..
and then you hear from girls who became pregnant 'cos of premarital sex, and they gave birth to the children (though some of the parents tried ways to get them to abort) and gave their own children up for adoption .. and how when they talk about their child, they still cry because it hurts. it just hurt your heart as well to hear about such things, and you can't stop thinking about how they really need God to heal their hurts, how they really need God to show them the unconditional love they've been craving for.
i think i'm going to enjoy this module a lot (like when i read about the sexual abuse cases, it was heartbreaking, but it's something that i'm really interested in). hee.
hee. some jokes came up too (shared by our lecturer 'cos she was illustrating how ignorant she and her biological teacher in the past was towards this topic).
apparently, she asked her bio teacher (when she was 14) what petting means. and the teacher replied with a straight face
' petting is what teachers do to favourite students' (haha. i thought this was pretty funny.. 'cos it's obviously wrong. and yet u can understand where the mistake came from).
and when one of her students (a boy in a certain boy's school) asked my lecturer ('cos she's a counsellor in the school) if oral sex was okay.. my poor ignorant lecturer replied that it's fine as long as you just talk about it o.O
so it was pretty interesting :) i was thinking about how when i'm a parent, i'm definitely going to
1) spend quality time with my children
2) talk openly about sexual issues with my children (so they'll get the proper knowledge from the proper place --> which'll shape their understanding and attitude towards it)
yup.