Helping Skill #3:  Summarizing 

   The University of West Indes was an experience I enjoyed. On March 11, we listened to a lecture about counseling skills and one of those skills was listening skills. There were different types of listening skills, but one in particular came to mind: summarizing.  We were asked to partner up with someone and come up with a scenario and act out how you would respond as a the counselor/ helping professional.  My partner was Anita. She was the client and I was the counselor. Our scenario was her son was moving to a different state with his children and how she misses him now and wished she could talk to him more. When it came to my turn to respond I said “it sounds like you will miss your son even more and you won’t get to spend as much time with him and your grandchildren.” At least that’s almost along the lines of what I said. The point is that I got to experience in what it could be like in the real world. Although, it was an act/scenario and we chose what  we are going to say, it still gave me the sense of what kind of things you can say or what the client will say. It gave me the feel of what it should look like: body language, face expression,tone of voice, and what can be changed if something was said wrong/on the edge. Also, it made me realize how difficult it can be for some people to be on the spot whether it is the client or professional. People can have similar experiences, that you might think you experience yourself. That is also ironic because that is not true and that is something we learned in this course as well.