Our work is limitless.  Our actions might seem abstract, but we act with purpose. Our purpose is to solve problems using art, media, and design. To create community and expand the world beyond the status quo. Through hard work and imagination our aim is to leave the world better than how we found it. We create because we can because art is intuitive. We have a story to tell. We want to inspire. It's our dream. What will you create here? Class of 2024 and thank you for tuning in to Emily Carr University's Connect event. My name is Joni Taylor and I'm the coordinator of student recruitment. We recognize that we are living in an unprecedented time globally, so we are grateful that you are able to join us online from across North and South America, parts of Asia, Europe, Africa, and Australia. Welcome. Before we begin, I would like to respectfully acknowledge that we live and work on the unceded traditional and ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Slewa-tooth nations. This event will last approximately one hour. We have four presenters and one student panel highlighting the uniqueness of Emily Carr University, our community, and programs. Our panel of four current students and alumni will be showcasing some of their work and talking about their experiences as students at Emily Carr after which we're going to have a Q&A session. But in the meantime, if you have any questions, please, at any time during any of the presentations, please click on the tab at the bottom of your screen and we have our student services team standing by to answer your questions. Okay, to start off, it is my privilege to introduce our president and vice chancellor, Dr. Jillian Sidal. Jill has had a long career in academic leadership and the performing arts. She holds an honors BA and MA and a PhD in English and is also a jazz vocalist and co-founder of the Guelph Jazz Festival. Please welcome Jill. Hi, everyone. It is my great pleasure to have this opportunity to connect with you all today. I've had the privilege of being president of Emily Carr University for almost two years now and there's so much I would love to tell you about this extraordinary place and its extraordinary people. It can actually be difficult to know where to start, but more than anything, I want you to know that I am incredibly proud of this university and its remarkable and resilient creative community, a community that you will soon become a part of. We have brilliant faculty who will work closely with you on our beautiful new state of the art campus. Our incredible staff will work hard to make your experience at Emily Carr unforgettable and our students and alumni are truly exceptional, proving themselves time and again to be leaders among their peers and committed to driving change toward a better future through creative thought and hard work. This incredible community of students, staff and faculty is the reason why Emily Carr is recognized by the QS World University rankings as the best place in Canada to study art and design and among the top 40 universities worldwide. I know this is a strange time to be starting your university degree. COVID-19 has touched virtually every aspect of our lives and university life is no exception. You're probably wondering what your experience at Emily Carr will be like over the next year. I can assure you that we've been hard at work planning for a variety of different scenarios to ensure that we're ready for you in September. There's still much uncertainty about how this pandemic will unfold but one thing I am sure of, no matter what happens you will get an outstanding world-class education as a student at Emily Carr University. It's becoming clear that in many ways our world will never be the same after COVID-19. There will be challenges but there is also tremendous opportunity, opportunity to shape and remake our world in ways that might have seemed impossible before. We might finally be able to make changes necessary to slow down climate change. We might discover innovative ways to reduce poverty. We may design new solutions to improve global health. Now more than ever society needs people who can imagine new possibilities in the face of an uncertain future. A post-pandemic world will need active, engaged participants in ways we're only beginning to understand. Such a world will need creative thinkers and innovators, people who feel empowered to help build inclusive communities where social and environmental justice can flourish. People like Material Matters co-director Keith Doyle, Emily Carr's associate dean Elendee Fraser, William Newhouse, Emily Carr's director of technical services in studio technician Logan Moore, who are behind the initiative to repurpose Emily Carr's arsenal of 3D printers and producing face shields for health workers on the front lines in the fight against COVID-19. I can think of no better place to build your readiness for the coming years and to become part of that community of change makers and leaders than right here at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. I'd like to thank each and every one of you for being here today. I'm just delighted to meet you all, and I look forward to seeing you very soon as you begin your journey at Emily Carr. Thank you. Thank you, Jill. Next up, I'd like to introduce Dr. Trish Kelly, our vice president, academic and provost, who joined Emily Carr as an associate professor in 2011. Trish has served as assistant dean and has taught first year undergraduate courses through to graduate studies for which she received the Ian Wallace Teaching Award, which recognizes excellence and innovation in teaching. Trish. Thanks, Joni. So excited to be here tonight to meet you all, however virtually. You should be proud of your achievements. The admissions process here at Emily Carr is highly competitive, so well done. This event is intended to help you understand the choices you have in front of you and address questions you might have about the curriculum, culture, and creative opportunities you will have at ECU. With our internationally recognized faculty and extensive facilities geared towards making, here I mean digital fabrication labs, wood and metal shops, animation and post-production studios, flexible materials and prototyping labs, ceramics, photography, and print media studios, the list could really go on. We're confident and excited about the work we're doing here as a globally recognized art, media and design institution, and we're excited about who we are and welcome you to be part of it. I'm the provost and chief academic officer at the university, responsible for the academic integrity of the institution and its accountability to the government as a public art and design institution. I work with faculty to ensure the university's curriculum, technical services, lab supports, and research facilities are cutting edge and that we collectively create a fulsome and challenging student experience that emphasizes criticality, self-reflexivity, hands-on material exploration, and cultural and contextual understanding and awareness. Throughout emphasis is placed on professional development and career training to ensure students can meet their post-graduation goals. I feel privileged to work with amazing faculty and technical staff who are here to push and support you as you move forward in your creative practice. I'm sure you have many questions regarding what will happen in the fall, specifically in terms of the realities of COVID-19. The entire post-secondary landscape, along with every other sphere of public life, has been affected by this pandemic. As a public institution, we are working closely with the Ministry of Advanced Education and Provincial Health Authorities to determine exactly what our fall semester will look like. We do anticipate some alternative instructional models, some online courses, increased remote access to studios and labs, hybrid curriculum, while also preparing for the reintroduction of more traditional curriculum with social distancing also factored in. The safety of our students and their continuity of learning during the pandemic are our top priorities. Thanks for taking the time to be here with us tonight, and welcome to the Emily Card community. Thank you, Trish. I appreciate that. I want to take a moment here to conduct a quick poll. So we're going to ask you this question, which region are you participating from? And you will see the poll appearing on your screen. So please feel free to respond and then hit submit. Oh, lots of answers are coming in. And then I'm going to share the results with you all, which you might find interesting. Looks like we're getting lots of questions in the Q&A area too. So keep those questions coming. Okay, good. It looks like most people have responded. So I'm going to share the results here. So you should all see the results there. It looks like we have 74% of the respondents are responding from North America. We have one from South America and 2% from Europe. A large contingent from Asia.  Thank you for joining us today. Next up is Kevin Bird. Kevin is the interim executive director and registrar for student services. Kevin has been part of the student services team for 20 years. So welcome Kevin. Hello everybody and welcome class of 2024. On behalf of student services and the university community, I really want to extend a wholehearted welcome to all of you. While your journey here will be one of many twists and turns as we navigate the new reality of COVID-19 together, student services will be here to assist your transition in whatever form that might take. Your student services team includes the admissions department, which many of you have become familiar with as they've guided you through the admissions process. They will be here to assist you with any of your admission questions, any transfer credit concerns you might have, and any housing questions that you might have. We also have a graduate studies advising office, and they will be happy to assist you with questions related to your graduate program and graduate planning. We also have an academic advising team, and they can assist you with your course registration questions. We're getting ready to register our students for this fall, and most of you will be looking at registering sometime in June. So watch out for those emails from our academic advising office. We also have an accessibility services area, where those folks can assist you with any learning accommodation or questions you might have. We have a counseling and wellness service, who will provide a range of services and activities that will support your wellbeing throughout your time with us. We also have a financial aid and awards office, and they will assist you with questions related to student loans and scholarship opportunities. And we have an international programs unit, and they will help you with student mobility questions, exchange questions, and assist you with any questions related to your study or work permits and visas, as well as study abroad opportunities. And we have a career and work integrated learning department, and they will provide a wide range of services and activities to help you prepare for a successful professional career within the creative industries once you're here. I encourage all of you to connect with our student services team. We are here to support you as you transition to us and continue on your new and exciting post-secondary journey. All the best and welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Kevin. And just to reiterate what Kevin said about the university's response to COVID-19, you can click on the tab on our website for new students for the latest information. Our next presenter is Sissy Fu. Dr. Sissy Fu is the Dean of the Faculty of Culture and Community. Sissy joined Emily Carr three and a half years ago and is responsible for foundation curriculum and activities. Sissy holds degrees in politics and philosophy from Harvard University and the University of Oxford. Welcome, Sissy. Thank you, Joni. Good evening, everyone, and good night to one of us who is in, I believe, Mexico and also a very, very early good morning to those of us joining from Europe and also good morning to everybody from Asia. I am Sissy, as Joni mentioned, and as I call up my slides, hopefully this is also a way to answer some of the questions that are popping up in the question and answer. So what I'm going to do is to give everybody a bit of an overview, a bit of a teaser, if you will, of the curriculum that you could look forward to in your first year at Emily Carr. And from then on also speak a little bit about the transition from the first year into your major of choice so that you have a sense of the kind of creative, critical thinking, making, and doing you will be engaging in in your four years of Emily Carr.  The type of thing that you might see in front of a blackboard perhaps, or perhaps an empty wall, as was the case in the 1970s when conceptual artist John Baldazzari actually sent a prompt remotely across the continent, just very simply seeking volunteers and participants to continue to write this phrase on a wall in an art school. It says, I will not make any more boring art. And as we follow the prompt, we find that in fact every iteration varies a little bit. That while there are rules about the things that we write and the types of wisdoms that we accumulate as we go through primary school, secondary school, university, that there will always be a sort of distinctiveness that make what you do yours. This is an exercise, a conceptual exercise, if you will, in authorship and creativity. How does that relate to the work that you will be doing at Emily Carr? Well, let's think about the ways in which various things look differently. Once we're able to change various elements of what we can see, what we can feel, and how we make together. It's not just individually, collaboratively, alongside each other. What Emily Carr offers in its first year is really the building blocks for your creative career. The way in which you have conversations, the way that concepts and ideas, those past, those that are current, and also those in the future actually connect with how our actual environment is, and how it changes with the ecology, with the environment, with the climate, including the atmosphere, in studios, in classrooms, in big lectures, in small seminars, and also, of course, in all the corridors and the hallways in which formal and informal ways of connecting takes place. And that's why Foundation is housed in the Faculty of Culture and Community, that I'm so very excited to introduce to you. As Dean of the Faculty of Culture and Community, there are various things that really become core to any educational endeavor in the 21st century. It is not just about acquiring the technical skills and the creative knowledge that will help you shape your practice and your career into the future. It is also the way in which we form cultures altogether, that we make publics within the institution itself, be it Emily Carr, be it a country, be it a city, or be it a world. This is not a typo. It does say co-mutiny. We tend to think of what mutates as those things that change, but those of us who are Latin nerds might find that mutiny actually comes from the root for movement. What we do at Emily Carr, especially in the first year, is a grounding of how we move together and that there is no single culture. We are not trying to make you into a mold. Like Baldasari and his exercise, we are trying to get you to see the boundaries and the rules of the parameters of what makes for a particular kind of practice and an interconnection of practices so that you can found your own culture, if you will. A little bit about the foundation year curriculum then. What you will find is that as you register for courses, and this takes place on Friday the 26th of June, that there are various choices that you could make. In fact, the foundation year is composed with a lot of variation within each requirement.  The academic core in the first semester and the second semester in the fall and the spring gives you the critical vocabulary and the principles and the concepts that is going to help you shape the way that you understand what you do in your core studios. It is a very deliberate and unique thing that Emily Carr does to introduce interdisciplinary right off the bat, and that is the interdisciplinary core studio where there are activities from drawing to collaborative endeavors to principles of applications of color and light and material investigations, all towards emphasizing the relationship between creative and critical practices. You can expect to move from 2D to 3D to 4D practices, those things that are time based, those things that are static, the things that you can put on walls, the things that pertain in the space between you and the screen, you and your faculty member, you and the group. In the first semester, you will also find a very special course called creative processes. That is actually a course about resilience, about iteration, about the imagination and actually quite crucially about how to fail, to fail again and to fail better. As an artist, as a designer, as a media artist, this is what Emily Carr is going to give you, a sense of how you are going to move forward as you try out different things, explore with excitement all those affordances in the world, be it technological, be it conversational, be it discursive. In the second semester, there is a visual arts media and design differentiated core studios, so you could focus a little bit more on the type of practice that would lead to the Bachelor of Fine Art, the Bachelor of Media Art and the Bachelor of Design. And finally, in the second semester, there is the elective studio where there is a chance for foundation students to be in studios where major practices occur. Then through practice itself and a hands-on understanding, we hope that students have a better sense of the type of major that one would like to engage in. Alongside the curricular parts is the Foundation Forum, a gathering every week during the semester where we invite alumna and alumni to return and speak to foundation students about their careers. So, as Trish mentioned, professional practices start right at the beginning of the Emily Carr education. There are also speakers who would offer workshops to give everybody a sense of what is accompanying the curriculum that you take. Quite crucially, towards the end of your first-year experience at Emily Carr, there is a foundation show. The first time is that you would be participating in a group show that takes up all the spaces within Emily Carr itself. And this is always an occasion for celebration with parents who support you, with faculty who support you, with all the staff of Emily Carr actually rallying your journey from first year into your second year. And finally, in foundation, there is the Foundation Program Office that makes sure that what you learn in classrooms and studios and shops is complemented by the ways in which they could be applied to the wider world, as well as how it connects to display and celebration opportunities such as the foundation show. Foundation also has its own shop with cutting-edge equipment that allows for the type of material and technical investigations that also help make decisions about majors to come. A little bit about the degree programs that foundation actually builds for. There are three degrees at Emily Carr, the BFA, the BDES, and the BMA. And what you see on screen are the different major trajectories that any Emily Carr student from foundation could choose to enter into. Some of them are more interdisciplinary than others and some are very focused in a particular kind of technique that accompanies that particular career outcome. So we see differences in the ways in which say our Bachelor of Media Arts degrees are raised, such that there are confluences and connections between the media arts. So from animation and storytelling, there are various different forms of output. In the Bachelor of Design, there is communication design, industrial design, interaction design. There may be questions that you have at that I be very happy to answer later. And our student panel could definitely shed light on how these different degrees and major outcomes differ. And in the BFA, there is the Interdisciplinary Visual Arts degree, which allows for students to engage in painting and ceramics at once. There is the more concentrated photography degree and illustration degrees and also a unique degree in critical and cultural practices that actually centres making from a theoretical and contextual and cultural standpoint. So it really covers quite a range of different ways of how we start thinking about making. There are also three minors at Emily Carr, who is the Director of Education at the University of London. They are text, curatorial practice and social practice and community engagement. These are courses that could fit across whichever major you decide to take. So think of the minor as a supplementary interdisciplinary moment where you get to meet students from outside your degree and have these collaborative conversations in order to further shape and supplement your primary practice. So I would like to share with you a little bit of community, how we move together, especially in this particular time, where perhaps various senses of spaces and temporalities feel suspended. At these moments, it is about how we come together and move together to create a world nearly a way in which we can reset the parameters and therefore also make together and also the way in which the world can be formed. I greatly look forward to welcoming you to the Faculty of Culture and Community and to your foundation year. Thank you, Sissy. So now we're going to move on to our student and alumni panel. So we have four guests with us here tonight on this panel. We have Stephanie Broder, Michelle Chan, Jonathan Alferro, and Sarah Cravelli. We're going to start with Stephanie. So what we're going to do here is we're going to... each guest on the panel will have an opportunity to introduce themselves, talk a little bit about their work, and then after that I will field questions from our studio audience. So we'll start with Stephanie. She is a Bachelor of Fine Arts illustration major graduate from 2019. Stephanie, welcome. Thank you. I'm excited to be speaking again at this event. Unfortunately this one is online, but you know in my first year I had to watch the online one anyways because I wasn't in Vancouver, so it's all good. It's all good information. So yeah, as Joni mentioned, it's all good information. I'm going to start with Stephanie. Since then I got a job at a local book findery. The combination of writing or text and art was always interesting to me as a student. It continues to be interesting to me in my career. On top of doing lots of illustration work, I also spent a lot of time in the printmaking department. So yes, there is opportunities to work in areas outside your major. So I really liked the idea of a combination of art and text, and silk screen work, which again was very much focused on that combination of art and text. And all of that to say that it led me to my grad project, which you can see on the screen here. I wrote part of a novel in a semester. I wrote maybe a quarter of a first year act of a novel, and created some accompanying illustrations for it, as well as chapter title pages that were illustrated. And then at the grad show, it was displayed with a couple of these finished pieces on a shelf for folks to handle and read. And I also created a vinyl art illustration to go, display around it on the wall to, um, draw people in and highlight some of the illustration aspects of it. Your book is beautiful. It looks beautiful. Can you tell us a little bit about the production process? Yeah, thank you. So I actually did pretty much all the steps of bringing it to reality. So not only did I do the right thing in illustrations, but I did the design for the, for the actual cover itself, as well as the page layout design on the interior. So I was working with in design, um, illustrator as well as paper and pencil. I literally every step of the process. Um, but the one thing that I couldn't do myself was print and bind it to the professional level that I wanted. So I actually used our on-campus printing lab, which is called the dock. And it was there that they helped me print it and create this perfect bound book. Um, which I have one. If anyone can see my camera, it's a beautiful physical object that I now get to keep. So yeah, I couldn't have created it as a physical object without the help of the dock. Oh, that's great. Yeah. The dock is the digital output center and it's a wonderful support for all students from all majors. Thanks, Stephanie. Uh, next we have Michelle Chan, who is a bachelor of design, interaction design major. And, uh, she is now in her fourth year. Michelle. Hey, thanks, Johnny. Uh, hi everyone. I'm Michelle and I started my journey at Emily car in 2016 back at the Grenville Island campus. Um, coming straight out of high school, I knew I wanted to do some sort of design, but I wasn't sure which one I want to do specifically. So in first year, I spent a lot of my time exploring all the different types of art and design practices, such as printmaking photography and industrial design. Uh, once we had our majors picked out and approved in second year, we really started to focus on developing our skills as interaction designers. Um, I learned to program HTML, C plus plus and some Arduino stuff. Uh, we also worked on our research skills. Um, UI, UX UI process, as well as some graphic design, like typography and motion graphics. I would say it was about halfway through third year. That's when I realized that I felt very passionate about health design. As I saw that a lot of my work usually revolves around health and wellness. Um, I'm especially interested in UX UI, um, service design and design research, uh, which are all incorporated in my grad project, Hylo, as you can see in the screen. Um, so Hylo is a diabetes management tool for young patients and their families. This is a digital diabetes management tool that aims to demystify childhood diabetes by empowering the child with agency and responsibilities while also getting the caretakers to provide the appropriate care and support. For this eight month project, I carried out the research and design of the products function and service. I was also able to work and co-create with patients and caretakers who have experienced with childhood diabetes, which was a really amazing experience. Um, many of us were also in a class called design for startups, which helped us develop the business side of our grad projects. Uh, and we had the opportunity to pitch our project, uh, product to a panel of experience and successful entrepreneurs, including an individual who got a deal in Shark Tank. So that was a really awesome experience. So through my years at Emily Carr, I was also able to lend a couple of professional opportunities and being able to work in healthcare as a designer before finishing my bachelor's really gave me the confidence and foundation to enter the workforce. Wow. Yeah, that's my time. Emily Clark. That's great. Well, that's wonderful. That sounds like you've had a very, uh, diverse experience within interaction design. Yeah. Um, so yeah, it's, it interaction design is a very broad range of stuff. Um, so for me, it's most, it's mostly about UX UI design research and service design. But for some of my other colleagues, it's, you know, interactive installations, programming and tech using stuff like Arduinos and raspberry pies. Um, some people to also do AR and VR. Um, we also do critical design, experimental design, sound design is also really cool. There's a lot of people who look into that too. Um, game design. Um, a lot of people find themselves between interaction, industrial or interaction and communication. And it's really like your call. Um, the cool part about interaction design is that you can really make it your own. Like you can take your external interests and mix it with your interaction design practice and come out with something new and incredible. Um, so yeah, I think it's a really versatile, versatile major and it allows for a lot of exploration. Yeah. Oh, that sounds great. Thank you, Michelle. Okay. The next, um, up is Jonathan Alfero. Jonathan is a bachelor of fine arts, visual arts major. Uh, and he is in his fourth year as well. Jonathan. Uh, hello. Hi. Hi, everyone. I'm excited to say that you're going to be joining it. I'm like our community. Um, so I was able to transfer traveling car at the beginning of second year and I came to the car specifically for the clinical and cultural practice major, which was a really, really great program. Um, so, um, as with all major as you are required to take some classes that exists outside of your specific umbrella. And in one of those classes was a second semester class of that second year class. Uh, it was a painting class with Rebecca Brewer, one of the faculty members there. And she was not only able to really challenge our own paintings like each individual painting, but also really challenged us to rethink our art practices in total. We also highlighted the ways that other materials, not just paint on canvas could be used for court history and time around us. Um, this really launched my own exploration to textiles, which I have still yet to leave. And also was the foundation as to why I actually transferred out of that critical and cultural program. Um, into specific, the visual arts major instead. Um, and yes, this process came everywhere from learning to like deconstruct linen to weave in it back together. Um, and to the point now where I'm actually working on like a 45 inch look, clear a loom at my studio. I'm using like a hundred percent Canadian source, a willing yarn. Uh, the artwork that you see here is a close up of a photo. Uh, sorry, it's a close up. Um, of an artwork I did for a show that was curated by Emily Hermont, who's a sculpture. Um, faculty member. Um, the show is titled intertwined and really looked to highlight textile based practices in Emily Carr community. There was a call for artists was put out in, in that year as April. And once I received that acceptance letter to the exhibition, I got started working. Um, the artwork ended up taking me around 147 hours. And the artwork in total is about a meter and a half by three meters. And it's kind of like draped over a dowel. Um, it's off. It's called every contact these pieces. And as I was kind of thinking through, um, ways in which the fiber itself could hold onto its memory of its own creation. Oh, well, I mean, it sounds interesting and it looks really beautiful for those of you who aren't aware, the image that you're seeing on the screen, uh, behind Jonathan's name is actually the piece that he's referring to. Can you tell us a little bit about the process? Yeah. So I had this idea for this artwork. I really wanted to make. Um, I had been testing this idea on this tiny little, I still have this little guy. I'll see if my, um, YouTube skills for showing things off is working here.  Um, but I had spent a little time working in textiles. I was able to contact Jen and Claire, who are the technicians in the soft shop family car, who are so amazing. If you're ever looking to explore textiles and they really helped me troubleshoot how I could take this tiny little sample and enlarge it to that really large artwork that I ended up making. Um, and then in that way, I took this big piece of linen I had bought to stretch over canvases and I sniffed each individual fiber and with tweezers pulled every thread out. I ended up removing about 90% of the material that it was made of. At the end I have what you see there, which is this like essentially piece of God's that can barely hold itself together, but it was really fun. That's, it's very beautiful. Thank you for sharing it with us. Okay. And next up now we have Sarah. Sarah Crovelli is a bachelor of media arts 2d animation major. Uh, she's also in her fourth year. Um, Sarah. Hey. Uh, yeah, I'm Sarah and, uh, I'm actually an international student. So my first time coming to my car was actually my first time coming to Canada, which it was such an amazing experience. Um, yeah, I'm in 2d experimental animation and it's such a wide program and it has all these different interdisciplinary practices when it comes to exploring animation as a, uh, genre of practice. Um, the thing that I'm most interested in is kind of working with the pre-production animation. So anything having to do with concept art and character design and all of that jazz is like my jam. So being able to come down my car and like learn about animation and the ins and outs of it is honestly so cool. Yeah. And, uh, I even got a chance this year to make my very own, um, short film is not completed yet, but it's getting there and it's, I'm really excited to see the finished product and having all of my professors being able to back me up on it and support me and help me out and give me good critiques and everything is just wonderful. So, uh, this piece that's we're seeing on the screen now is part of a conceptual piece, a larger conceptual conceptual piece. Can you tell us what concept art is and what interests you about that? Yeah. So concept art is kind of like a, it's more of like an umbrella for a lot of the pre-production work that goes into any film, game, TV show, just anything really. Uh, it's essentially the, the time that you're spending coming up with the concepts for the media. So coming up with the characters, coming up with the environments, the props, um, like what kind of world is it? Is it a sci-fi world? Is it a fantasy world? How are you going to depict this in whatever medium you're using? Um, so concept art for, uh, a 2D department is maybe a lot different from concept art for a 3D department because you're working with different materials. Uh, or if you're working with stop motion, like you have to think about the materials you're using and kind of how to translate that into the final product. So the concept art is kind of just, you know, coming up with the concepts for everything. Yeah. Well, it sounds really interesting. This piece is really beautiful. The color scheme is quite nice. It goes with our colors, the slideshow too. So well done. Okay. Thanks. Thanks all. We're going to actually take your questions now from the audience. Um, the first one here is for Stephanie. Stephanie, I know that you were pretty involved with campus life while you were a student. Can you tell us about your experiences with campus life? Yeah, for sure. So Emily Carr is a pretty small university. We have a fairly small student body. Um, and so some people are worried that that will somehow reduce their opportunities to get involved or become engaged with other students. But I found it to be quite the opposite because it is a small student body. It's really easy to get to know people and to find new opportunities. So I pretty much participated in something new every year. So I was a student ambassador for a while, which was actually working for the university to help incoming students, um, learn about the school and get settled in. And then the year after that, I ran for the students union, which was a volunteer position to support and represent students. Um, on, on behalf of the student body to the university to make sure that our needs are being met as students. Um, and then in my fourth year, I participated in the curatorial committee for the grad show. So usually a graduating class has a big to do at the end. And we all display our work. And it's actually the graduating students themselves with the support of faculty and staff who curate that entire show. So I was able to with the help of another illustration section of the show. So yeah, there's a lot of opportunities to get involved as long as you're willing to look around. We also have very active club scenes and lots of events that are going on all the time. So yeah, I just encourage you to keep your eyes open and don't be shy to get to know people. Yeah, that's true. Thanks, Stephanie. All right. The next question up is for Michelle. So, um, we're all aware that Emily Carr off offers a robust career development and work integrated learning program. Um, and I know that you've been involved with that. Can you tell us about your experience with this program? Um, yeah. So last summer I was able to work with the learning technologies team at Vancouver coastal health. As a media, multimedia designer for five months. I was lucky enough to be the lead designer of the Mike, I concussion website that we designed for one of the VCH facilities. Um, the GF strong rehabilitation center. Um, so along with an instructional designer and a developer, as well as some clinicians and patients from GF strong, we were able to build this resource site from scratch, which includes the site itself. As well as 96 illustrations and diagrams that went along with each article. Um, yeah, it wasn't really amazing experience working in the government. Um, it was really insightful. Um, the pressure was definitely there, but it made me a more rigorous designers for sure. Um, I also work at the health design lab here at Emily car. Uh, right now we're working on a research piece about pharmacogenetics. We're working with the Canadian digital super cluster, uh, tell us how genome BC and life labs to understand the physicians perspective of the implementation of pharmacogenetics and clinical practice. Um, we're working with the TELUS UX team on this project, and it's really awesome that we get a glimpse of what their process looks like. So the career development office really helped us out with all our co-op needs. Um, they get us really awesome opportunities and facilitate the conversations and evaluations between us and the employers. Um, they also take their time to talk us through our challenges and struggles, especially like professionally. And they also host amazing events like the careers week portfolio review at Microsoft last year.  Um, from all these different companies from different types of designers was really. Amazing. It was like one of the best experiences ever. Um, yeah, they're all really great at their office. They know you personally and they take care of you. And I'm really grateful that they were able to help and nudge me forward in my career. Wow. That sounds amazing. It sounds like you were very busy. Um, within that program. So that's, I hope that's been helpful for you. Oh yeah. I was totally excellent. That's great. Good. So we have another question here. Now for this one's for Jonathan. I'm aware that you recently gave a skill up presentation through, um, I think it was career and professional development as well. Um, but can you, um, I think your presentation was on reaching out to community. Um, and so can you tell us a little bit about what led to the speaking opportunity? And then how it impacted you as a student. Yeah. So in, uh, I guess you can take the class in third or fourth year. I decided to take it in fourth year. It's, it's a professional practice class. Um, and this one specifically it was being taught by Annie Breard. Um, and in the class, one of our final assignments is really focused on putting together. Our own exploration into a way that we are going to be pushing ourselves professionally into the future. So I had chosen to do research on what it looked like to find alternative spaces for hosting our own like our exhibitions. And while I was doing this research and I was able to contact people who are willing to give me spaces, I actually came to the realization that the reason why I was able to find those spaces was not because of a formula, but because of the communities that we're able to create and connect with. So I then shifted my research into how can we actually contact and create communities with people. So I ended up giving my final presentation on this topic. And Annie Breard was really excited by my research and actually asked me to do one of these skill up presentations through the Shumka center. So these little talks happen over a lunch period. They're only about like 30 minutes long. Um, and it's really nice. They go right throughout the course. So I ended up giving my final presentation on this topic. Um, and it's really nice. They go right throughout the semesters and each week there's different speakers, everything from talks that are held by like myself, like a student, but then also industry professionals that will be talking to you everything from how to like package and create artwork to how to. And build a website, how to look at your CD and are the statements, all of like so many different topics that end up being like really, really, really helpful. Um, and in my case, I was able to give this talk and it was really nice having a lot of peers who showed up and giving me like positive feedback after. Um, and then even for myself, just really looking at how I view creating community and how actively in this own talk, I was able to see like how that community was being created actively. Wow. That's great. That's, that sounds like a great opportunity too. I had forgotten to mention that about the, um, professional development and the professional practices classes, those are very valuable. I'm glad you received that great opportunity through that. Good. Thanks. Okay. And there's another question here for this one. I'll give to Sarah. Uh, it's about animation. So can you tell me, uh, the difference between 2D and 3D animation? Cause I know you were in 2D animation. Uh, yeah. So 2D animation, the best way to think about it is it's just two dimensional. So any of the old Disney films like Aristocats, Lion King, anything like that, that is 2D animation. So traditional animation. Um, 3D animation is three dimensional. So it is things that are like, like Moana, uh, frozen. Uh, a lot of video games nowadays are all 3D, uh, animated. And essentially just, it's kind of a difference of just how you make it. So 3D has a lot to do with modeling and rigging. Uh, rigging is basically kind of putting the skeleton into the clay model. This is the simplest way to describe it. Um, so you have to kind of mold the character in the program. Um, you can start adding the textures, putting the, like rigging it, um, doing the UV maps and all that jazz. And then eventually you'll be able to do the animation, which leads on to a lot of the movies you know nowadays that are 3D. Uh, 2D animation is all flat. Um, there are different ways to do 2D animation. Uh, you can do it just the traditional way where you're just drawing every single frame. You can do puppet animation, but you can do it in a lot of TV shows. Uh, shows like my little pony, uh, family guy, things like that. Those are all puppet animation. So it's similar to how you build 3D animation, but it's just two dimensional. So you have all these different parts for the characters. That you kind of tie together. Uh, yeah. Oh, excellent. That's, that's very helpful. Now I know that there's, um, a variety of studio spaces. So, um, the, I guess there's the digital, there's the, um, and then there's the quieter state studios for the, um, to, um, for creating, uh, the stop motion animation. And did you work in both, um, areas or were you primarily digital? Uh, yeah. So we have the animation lab, which is maybe I'm biased, but it's one of my favorite spaces in the school. It's just extremely large. The most, if not all the computers have, uh, a Cintiqs. So it's great for like the 2D animators who want to like see when they're drawing digitally. Um, a lot of the computers have like all the programs we need. If you're in 3D or if you're in 2D. So the animation lab is just wonderful. Uh, they also have light tables. So if you want to go like super traditional, you can like actually get paper and pencil out and start animating on one of the light tables. And we even have like an old fancy, uh, peg hole puncher that's like one of like five in Canada. So that's super cool. And as far as the, the stop motion room goes, um, we have a also very large, uh, camera room that is equipped with a multitude of very old, very expensive cameras. And you can use those to film either stop motion, you can do, um, traditional paper, uh, traditional puppet animation. So with like just cut out paper, uh, you can do all kinds of things. And I was very fortunate. Um, in my summer of 2019, I took a stop motion class and I actually got to make stop motion puppet, which I don't know if you can see him. He's kind of just chilling out right over there. Maybe I'll grab him. Uh, I got to build an actual stop motion puppet and then animate it in the camera room. And it was really cool and also very hard. Okay. We've got another question. This one's about housing. So I'm going to, uh, see who, which, which one of you would like to respond to this. I know Sarah, you've had a fairly positive experience with housing. Um, is there anyone else who would like to respond to that? Or Sarah, would you like to speak to that? About housing options. Yeah. Sorry, go, go ahead. If nobody else wants to, if nobody else wants to, then yeah, definitely. Um, since I'm international, finding housing here was a bit of a challenge, um, because I don't have any family here. I couldn't just stay with family and I didn't know anybody either. So kind of doing like a just rooming with some random people was just kind of a hard decision. So what we decided to do was enroll me into the, uh, homestay program. And for those of you who don't know, uh, homestay program is where you go and live with another family. And it's great if you're coming from a different country or if you're coming from the other side of Canada, where you're not used to the culture here. So like it's wonderful to just kind of have them help you meld into the culture and like help you around. And I really lucked out. I absolutely adore my host family. I've been here in the same house for four years now. Um, and it's absolutely wonderful. And it's really easy to just kind of apply and get matched with like the best family. Um, and I was also lucky enough that two of my roommates, one of them has moved out recently, but two of them actually were also students in Emily car. Uh, one of them in the same year as me. So it was like bonus points. I also have two Emily car students living in my house with me. So yeah, definitely, definitely going for homestay. And now, um, we do have a robust, um, uh, housing office that operates typically during the summer. So if this is something that any of you out there are interested in, in finding resources, uh, you can always email housing. Um, you can email housing at ecuad.ca and they can assist you with, um, the possibility of housing resources. Okay. So we're coming to a close now. And, um, so I would just like to thank all of our participants who have, um, joined us here today. But before I close, I would like to thank you for joining us today. I'm going to talk a little bit about, um, accepting your offer. Uh, you've received this information, um, through an email from admissions. Uh, but we've, we've set up the link here for you on this, uh, page here. So you can just go to that link. And it gives you all the information about how to accept your offer. Uh, in order to do so, you would need to pay your deposit by the deadline of May 1st. Okay. And you can also email admissions at ecuad.ca if you have any questions about how to, um, pay your deposit. Okay. The other thing I'd like to, uh, do is we are going to send you a survey because we want to find out how, if this was helpful for you, we want to find out how we did. So please take a moment to take the survey. We will be sending it to your email. Um, and so then you'll just be a link in there. You can click on that. We're also going to include the, uh, websites of our four student panelists. So you can look at their work further and, um, maybe contact them through their websites. They've got some really cool work up there. So that'll help you kind of get to know them a little bit better. Okay. Uh, so thank you all very much for attending, uh, today to our future students, our current students, and our former students who joined us today. I'd like to thank all of the presenters who spoke and all of my Emily Carr colleagues who worked behind the scenes tirelessly answering your questions. Uh, thank you all for attending. It's been our pleasure to connect with you online. Uh, so please do email us if you have any further questions. Otherwise see you in the fall and stay safe. Thank you all.


We demystify what goes on behind the therapy room door. Join us on this voyage of discovery and co-creative conversations. This is The Therapy Show, behind closed doors podcast with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. Welcome back to the next episode, which is episode 125. Bob, can you believe it? I know. And we're going to kind of go right back to the beginning with this one. And we're going to be looking at how to prepare for your first client, which I'm not sure you can even remember that far back. Well, well, you know, I was thinking about this because you tell me the last podcast, what this would be. So I started training in 1986 at Metanor Psychotherapy Training Institute. That's a long time ago. That's what? Where are we now? 23? So that's 37 years ago, is it? Something like that? Yeah. Now in those days, psychotherapy is a bit like the wild west. What I mean by that is it really just started. It was in its infancy in the United Kingdom. And there wasn't much regulation around it in many ways. So the UK CP, as a major regulated body, hadn't even been created. BACP, which was in its creation, the BAC, wasn't even created. I was training in transaction analysis. And there was a European Association of Transaction Analysis, which was a created, I can't remember where, when I was 78, maybe was 80. But anyway, there was no national regulated bodies really. So that's what I meant by the wild west because Metanor Psychotherapy Training Institute, when the first Psychotherapy Training Institute in London, I think the TA program, and I don't think they had any, I think they had one more training program actually in Gestalt Psychotherapy. But neither of them, as I said, there weren't the national, there wasn't the UK CP, BACP, or other regulating bodies around. So I was part of this European one. Okay, but this is right at the beginning of psychotherapy in this country. Where we are in 23, there's many regulating bodies. Training is usually a four-year program or could be more. BAC camps and courses are usually four years, three years, and sometimes two years, but they have level one, sorry, level two, three, four, five, and six. And the training I was on was a four-year training program actually, which was regulated by the European Association of Transaction Analysis. But it was before the days of placements, it was before the days of essays, it was before the days of the requirement of hours, it was before the days of many different things. And I'll just show you how wild it was. I could start seeing clients probably in the first three or four months of the first year. That shows how absolutely we're in a different world. So training is completely different in terms of regulation requirements. And I think I, well, it's interesting because I think in the February of that year, I saw my first client, so that'd be February 87, something like that. No, it'd be no past then. What was it? I can't remember. I was just thinking it was February, might have been earlier. But so I do remember my first client. I remember very well. And I remember me thinking, how shall I prepare for this first session? And I had no idea. There is no preparation for the first one. People now, they don't see clients so early in their training. They're using start-off and placements. They've done clinical competency practices before they get to the placements. There's used to be lots of discussions and training about what happens, or might happen, or could happen. They've probably got a supervise on all these different things. So you trained in 2010, was it? Or something? 2012. Yeah. So you would have done placements, wouldn't you? No. You've trained at our MIPS, didn't you? Were the placements going then? Oh, yeah. Well, I did the low-cost therapy. That was a placement. You would have done that in your second year. Yes. So you would have probably even done clinical competencies. Yeah. You practiced these competencies to have them evaluated by a trainer. Yeah. So you've got this whole discussion and this whole platform of experience, which is protecting you with everything else. Back when I started, there wasn't any of that. No. That's why I smile to myself. Wild West. Yeah. What should this first session be like? So I thought, so how it happened was, this is back in the day. Does anybody listen to this? Pardon me if I don't know people's ages, but back in the day where I decided to advertise, try and get clients, because there weren't placements and things like that. It was something called yellow pages. Love the yellow pages. It was a really good door stop. It used to hold the door open. So I decided I'm going to advertise in the yellow pages. Now, the problem with that in many ways was, well, it was positive. It worked, by the way. But I didn't think about, well, what do I do? Somebody phoned me up. What do they say to them on the phone? How do I work out whether they're suited for psychotherapy? Any of this assessment stuff I hadn't thought about. And I was very surprised when they had to be phoned me up. So somebody phoned me up and I wasn't quite sure what to say on the phone. And to my credit, I've had supervision. I had managed to get myself a supervisor and had spoken to them sort of about four days before this yellow page ad came out. So it had some training, if you like, on assessments and what to ask. And this person who was probably about 30 at the time, 29, he decided he'd like to have fair with me. So we arranged the time. And I can't believe I did this. But I arranged it 12 o'clock that's a midday on a Saturday, which A is working the weekends, but B much more prevalent. It was across a television program that was on at that time of the day called football focus. I always watched football addicts. Now, this was really devastating. It may not be for you, but because this person stayed with me for over two and a half years, I never saw football focus again for two and a half years. That's so funny, Bob. I can't believe that that's the one thing that's coming to mind. Well, if you think of preparing for your first session, it's important to think about, well, am I going to work out of social hours? Like at the weekend, for example. What time, if I am going to do that, does that then interfere on my, well, it did in this case, I've just told you, but interfere on my social time, am I prepared to do that? Going along with that, Bob, as well, I think it's important to look at it long term. This isn't just a short term thing. You might think, oh, well, I can give up my Saturdays for a couple of months. This client stayed with you for a couple of years. So it's about doing those, you know, unsociable hours long term, maybe. Yeah. Very good thing to say, but it didn't occur to me at the time. It's a tip for people listening. It's a really good thing you've just said there to think about if you're going to work long term clients, then, yes, it's a very good thing to think about. Yeah. One of the things, do you know what I mean? For me, in order for people to pay when, you know, we're in private practice, the majority of them are in work Monday to Friday, nine to five. So a lot of my clients early on were after six o'clock. So it was a lot of, in fact, I still do a lot of evening work. Do you know what I mean? So it's not like being employed by somebody and having a working day. And I did used to work weekends, but found I gave that up as soon as I could. Yeah. Well, I used to watch Top of the Pops. Do you remember that? I do remember that. Yeah. On Thursday night. When I started seeing clients, I never saw Top of the Pops again for years. I don't know. You survived the early days, Bob. I really don't. I think I did survive it very well, because many of my favourite programs, especially around football, I didn't see for years. And again, there's a program called The Prisoner On around that time. I've never saw the ending of that. But I'm going to catch up on YouTube now, Bob, if you want to. In a serious note, you're correct. It is important to think about this in terms of social time. If you're going to see somebody long term, I think it's an important consideration how to prepare for your first client in terms of the logistics of the appointment. Yeah. So I think it's a very good point. And I didn't. Yeah. What I did do in the time before the person came was my phone was supervised again for a second session, because I had one already. Talking about, I think I've only wanted Tuesday. And I've said, well, you know, how do I prepare my room? Do I have the chairs opposite each other? And if they are opposite each other, how should I get a sort of ruler out and measure how much distance there is between one chair to the other chair? And should I have the chair at the side? Because if I've got the chair opposite my client, I might be staring into their eyes and they might feel intimidated. So I got myself obsessed with how the environment that my client was walking into. So should I make them a cup of tea? Do I need to make sure that there's some water around all these biscuits around all these things? And how many cushions should I have? And should my cushions be colour coordinated? And there should there be tissues in the room? And my supervisor, I think after listening to me for about 40 minutes said, it's okay, just calm down. If we're preparing for a first session, even though I went over the top and I was projecting my anxiety onto all these practical things, I do think it's important the environment that the person's coming into. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Do you? Yes, yeah. If anybody again on YouTube, you can kind of see this is where I see clients behind this part. This is my working room. So this bit is where I do my videos and the other bit. But I paid a lot of attention to it, you know what I mean? There's a couch on one side and then there's my chair. I've had clients that come in and want to sit in my chair, which is absolutely fine. Do you know what I mean? But I agree with you. Do you put the chairs directly facing each other or on a slam tour? Yeah, what do you do? That's fine. So I think it's an important point, what I said was that most people, they are anxious because it's their friends' client. Yeah. And people project their anxiety out onto practical things and often to the supervisor they're talking about. I did it obsessively. So when she started talking about, we can talk about that and it just calmed down, you feel anxious. Once I talk about my anxiety, then the obsession about getting a ruler out, about measuring how much distance from one chair ceased. Good. I think as well, it's worth mentioning that sometimes we're hiring a room or using somebody else's room but we don't really get much chance to do anything other than jiggle the furniture a little bit maybe. That's a really good point because many, many people do hire rooms out. Depending on where they are, of course, or depending on the policy and regulations that that organisation has. So they might have rooms and regulations about when you can't change the pictures, you can't change this, you can't do that. So there's no personalisation of the room. Yeah. And you might only have it for one day a week. So to me, you need to work from 9 o'clock in the morning, right, food's on 9 o'clock at night because that's the only day that you can see clients. So you might be limited to certain things. I still think for the first sessions, when you're starting out, one way to, even if you're working in that type of organisation you just talked about, there will be small things you can do. Yeah. There will be, whether it's bringing in tissues, whether it's about bringing in different types of cushions, whether it's about, there will be things you can do. Yes. Because for me as well, I like a throw, you know, I don't know why, but when I'm in a therapy session, as in I'm the client, I always feel cold. I don't know why that is, but I always feel cold and need the toilet whatever that's about. I don't know. So that's another thing to be mindful of, you know, to me, having a bathroom available to the clients. Yeah. Yeah. And it's really important because of the relational needs for safety and security. Yeah. Are really important. Things like warmth. Yeah. Yeah. Things like, well, many of the things that will help somebody feel secure are really important to attend to. Yeah.  Going to toilet, going to the toilets is really important for them. Yeah. So I think it's really important there's a toilet. I think it's really important it's warm. I think it's really important it's secure. I think it's really important it's safe. And it's important for the therapist, I think, at the beginning when they're going through probably their, you know, their admin contract, whatever that is, to show the client, well, this is worth all it is. Yeah. You know, and all the various really important things around security and safety. So the person feels, oh, this is a place I can actually feel safe in. Yeah. Because one of the things that I always thought, and I think it goes back to when I was a foster carer, I often used to think what it was like for the foster kids the morning after they'd been placed with us, how it would feel to be in a strange house with somebody that I've never met before, that first morning coming downstairs. Do you know what I mean? And I would have hated that. So for me with new clients, not necessarily me as a new therapist, but with all my new clients, I give them as much information about the area that I am, where's the best place to park. Do you know what I mean? On my website, there's a picture of the outside of my house, so it's familiar to that, you know, there's quite a bit of thought gone into putting my clients at ease on that first session. Yes, I think that's very, very important. And people that ignore that or discounted or minimise what we're talking about here, I think it can promote a place where the client may not feel that safe to do the work they need to do. Yeah. The other thing that I did on my first session was had reams and reams and reams of activities and things I could do because I didn't feel confidence in my ability to just be in the moment with clients. It was like, no, I need, I need something that I can work through step by step. Yeah, well, I know you like a lot of diagrams and techniques, but all these things are important. And they're often, you know, we just talk about security and safety for the client, which I think is extraordinarily important. We also need to think about how do we maintain our anxiety ourselves in that first session? Yeah. Or is the therapist by definition their first session that going to be hugely highly anxious? And how do we take care of ourselves so that we can soothe our own anxiety? Now, if that's by lots of exercises, techniques, whatever it is, that's not bad. Yeah. I think I can remember in my early days, because I used to rent a room from you at MIP. And, you know, it was interesting because there was, you know, therapists that had been there for years and like me, a newly qualified one and everything. And I can remember one therapist used to have a snooze in between clients. And I can remember thinking, there's no way that I could be that relaxed in between clients that I would literally lie on the couch and have a 10 minute snooze in between clients or whatever. But yeah, that's what they did to take care of themselves. Yeah, maybe. But I bet that person's quite experienced and I bet that person, it wasn't their first session. Absolutely not. No. So, you know, for me, I think it was a really good environment as a first time psychotherapist to be amongst therapists that had been doing the job for different amounts of time to see it's not all bad. So how we manage our own anxiety is really important to think about. Another thing she's absolutely important to think about is safety and protection. And I don't know how many people, and I've never done any research on this, see their clients for the first time at home. You know, they're okay. So your first client wasn't in the placement of MIP, it was at home. Oh, no, I'm with you. My very first one. No, it wasn't. It was at MIP. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. So in a way, the organisation took care of the safety of the building. Yeah. There's other people around. Yeah. So in a way, that's that's great for you because they don't have to think about this. Yes. Yeah. People who work from home for whatever reasons, economic or whatever it is, so their first session is at home. They need to think about several things around protection for themselves. Yeah. That's really important. And that will start off in the assessment. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Again, at MIP, I did the assessment. So I probably worked out the placements for you asking all those years ago. Yeah. You're doing yourself on the telephone.  And when I did, even though I was experienced as in, you know, a couple of years in, even when I did start seeing clients from my house, I can remember feeling really vulnerable when I first started and even asking the question, should I have a panic button? Yeah. Well, that's, see, that's a very, very real question. And, and actually, a supervisor might suggest you do have a panic button, especially if you work for a loan from your house, your first client, you're going to be tremendously anxiety. It could even be somebody, well, it'll be a stranger probably. Yeah. You know, it's a very important question to take to a supervisor about. Yeah. And, you know, the advice supervisors might give probably things which might go from panic buttons to make sure your friend knows when you start a session and when you end a session. Yeah. And if anybody else in the house, and if there isn't, make sure that you fix up things with friends who know when you start and when you finish. I think that's what I did was to you, because for confidentiality, obviously, you can't be sharing lots of information about who you are seeing, but you can say, I will be with clients from this time to this time. Do you know what I mean? So that if they don't hear you from you afterwards, then something might have happened. Yeah. Yeah. So I think to think about your own protection, think about where you're going to be working from is really important. Yeah. Especially if you live alone. In fact, you know, I think it needs to be a lot of supervision about if you're alone seeing clients, you know, for those of you being in an organization or working from a center or working from a place where there's a lot of people around. It's a big discussion, I think. Yeah. In the early days, or generally as a psychotherapist? Generally anyway, but I was talking about this. Well, generally, yeah. Anyway, hopefully through supervision, I've worked it out more and all these sorts of things. But in terms of a first session, particularly. Yeah. It's strange as well, because I suppose, you know, as you're talking about, you know, the safety, I personally can remember feeling quite vulnerable in the early days when I was doing it. And I was thinking, would I have felt that way if I was a man? I don't know. Is it just talking about females on their own? Or potentially anybody can be open to something happening in a therapy room? Yeah, I mean, as a male. Now, my first part was a male, so I didn't feel what I'm going to say now. But, you know, generally, if you think about it just as a man with a woman, the opposite sex, you know, it's just as open to allegations or, or whatever, you know, as a same sex. So we live in a world now where, you know, it may, I was just thinking of protection, but I know, I know this is a really important area for people to think about when they have their first clients. Yeah. Yeah. I think how we manage our anxiety is a really important thing to I think, as I said, the environment and the safety and everything else. Yeah. I also think to have your supervisor set up is really important. And if you can, have a session before you see your first client with your supervisor. I mean, back and then I remember, as I said, phoning my supervisor up for at least one session, maybe even two, I can't quite remember, before I saw this person, mainly to deal with all the anxiety I have. Yeah. So again, we, I didn't really have much of that because we were trained at MIP. Part of the course was to have supervision. So we automatically took our low cost clients to supervision. It was a very cost-eated way of doing it, which is why I loved it. You know, for two years, we were still training and had supervision and it was a very nurturing way of becoming a psychotherapist. Obviously, you put a lot of thought into that, Bob. I did. And I think maybe a lot of people listening on the various counselling courses or therapy courses will have what is called placements now. Yeah. You know, all these things are considered and they have to have a placement supervisor. And they should be having a session, I think, before they start seeing their first client. And if they work in, you know, a beacon or mind or whatever placement provider we're talking about, they should be providing the assessment process. They should be providing the premises XXXXX. Now, MIP had very nice premises and I know not all placement providers do, but or stroke and I think these are the things that are important in the first session. And you need to make it, I think, one really big tip, to make it as easy as possible for you, which means minimizing your own anxiety, usually. Because in general, the clients would it usually be more scared than you? I can remember you saying that to me Bob I literally can't you've just broken that I can remember you know what I mean and the other question I think that I asked you was am I gonna damage them if I get it wrong that was a big fear of mine if I get this wrong in the therapy room potentially I'm gonna damage this person yeah this is where supervision is really important isn't it yeah when you start seeing crimes yeah ultimately you are going to be anxious on your first session you know it's not going to be perfect I think you need to prepare yourself for the fact that you're going to be scared when you walk into that first session yeah okay well actually I'll go further than that it's really odd if you weren't anxious yeah something very wrong if you don't have the anxiousness or apprehensiveness the main thing is that you have that first session that you do it don't talk yourself out of it yeah that's a big one you have to it's really important and most groups I know again on our training that have got placements you have a social Facebook page where they actually do sort of not talk about all the confidential stuff here I'm just talking about you know about your first session you know and it didn't collapse did you or whatever it is yeah the confidential stuff and the exologist of all goes to the supervisor but there was something about mutual conversation if you like yeah so people have gone down the same road yeah absolutely and I was really honest and open with the people that I was in training with do you know what I mean I think you need to be in that safe space where you can talk about the things that you get wrong and how you felt without fear of judgment or criticism yeah that's a really never big thing isn't it for people just starting their first session is support yeah he is yeah not just supersizing it obviously really important but you know colleagues peers people are going down the same road as you yeah really important yeah absolutely it is it's a it's a nice community to be in I think as a psychotherapist that's a good way again to manage your anxiety and to manage what you just talked about there often might be unrealistic unrealistic expectations because when you say starting off of course like everything else you have to learn by mistakes you have to learn by challenges you have to learn by difficulties and if you don't then actually you're in the wrong career yeah yeah but I remember my first session like yesterday and how do you remember mine now now the other thing about that I was amazed you ever came back because first of all it was very late and secondly I have no idea well in general terms I do Jack is some sort of exaggerating AI smiling because I just remember this how I got through the session and secondly what on earth did the person talk about because because my anxiety was so high I mean I know they talked about you know what they can issue was and everything else but to be perfectly honest that 15 I wasn't 15 it's three courses now because I came late when so quick yeah I had that when they went away first of all I had to write down why I did remember which wasn't much and I had convinced myself when I've come back anyway so I was amazed when they came back and it came back and came back and came back anyway so I think it's important to prepare yourself as much as you can to minimize your anxiety and and also disappointment and victories and things that go on on the way but that's my biggest tip I think to minimize yourself so to to really prepare how to manage your own anxieties or disappointments yeah do you think it's important or not important to mention to the client that you are new to this well that's a wonderful question according to what's seen by you okay well we'll say different things I think that in terms of ethicality and transparency it's important so again well I didn't have to worry about that because the low-cost clients it was an understanding that they weren't newly trained or in training psychotherapists so it was kind of the done but I'm just thinking outside of that I think you need to and also your prices should reflect that you're a trainee anyway so no I think it's very important that if it's that's your first client that when you advertise and when you accept somebody and in the contractual stages you say that you're a training psychotherapist and several things happen there one it'll take anxiety off you number two I was thinking yeah number two you've got transparency three your prices should reflect that so yeah that might be one of the reasons they come anyway and also then the client will feel more honoured by your level of transparency and honesty yeah yes is the answer to the question good I'm glad because I think I would say that that's important as well mainly for the first bit that it will help with our anxiety if the other person knows that we're in training yeah I did that I definitely did that for the reasons I've just said and I would certainly recommend that everybody does yeah and like I said you know I would recommend MIP for anybody that wants to get into this training I'm always you know singing your praise is the way that it was it's set up it's designed it's very it's a smooth process that sees you from the start on the you know transactional analysis 101 all the way through to being a fully placed person no I think really helps in terms of safety security transparency assessment all the things we're talking about here and I hope some of the tips we've said in this video will help people and might also remind themselves when I think of a more experienced people might be listening and take themselves back to that first time with their first client and I think I think to remember the beginning and how it was and how we've grown and where you are where you've come to today is it's important to reflect on the journey and I love listening to your stories Bob because for me you've been you're my mentor and my guru and you've been doing this forever but to hear you talking about your early days of being a psychotherapist doing it at 12 o'clock on a Saturday and not being able to watch a football program it's terrible I was always you know avid football person, Manchester City particularly and that I don't know what earth took me to do that but I'm on a reflection now talking this it would have been around anxiety over adapting to the person in front of me or on the phone in this case yeah when they could fit in rather than when you were willing to do it and again you know looking at it long term which is one of the reasons why I said you've got to think that you're doing this long term is because resentment can set in if you're not being able to do what you want because you're seeing a client so don't go there don't do it when football focus is on all the accidents anyway yeah or Coronation Street it's never a good at half past seven on a Monday Wednesday or Friday either yeah yeah blimey yes so Bob until next time we're what we're going to be looking at which is up your street important books that will be influential for the clinical therapist a review of literature so maybe your you know I could talk forever honestly I think I've had I think I probably have got nearly all books that have been written in transaction analysis since 1960 I reviewed most of them I think I've got most of the integrated books in terms of earthskin and many many many many so that podcast I do not know how we're going to fit it into the 40 minutes you'll have to write me back in in the podcast and then there's of course all the you know all the books that you've written as well well yes we could do a part one and part two if it's going to be a long one but I was just gonna say I don't think there's a podcast that goes by that you don't throw a book title in there that's relevant to the podcast you're probably right because if I'm going to mention a book I'm going to talk about how that fits in what it's about and why should people should read it I don't know if we can do it too but we can maybe have a part one and two if need be yeah and anyway what was the second one which we probably won't get round to but we might get round to um how we present ourselves in the therapy room and does it matter yes I think if I I think I don't know if we're going to get around to that but at least I'll know what the one is for the three weeks after or whatever it is yeah so come back and you'll be surprised whether we're doing a one or two or or what or a hybrid a hybrid yeah mix them all up so until next time Bob thank you so much yeah thank you bye bye take care bye you've been listening to the therapy show behind closed doors podcast we hope you enjoyed the show don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review we'll be back next week with another episode