The weather has been noticeably cooler in the last two weeks, with occasional rain. Summer hasn’t quite come to an end, but there are very clear hints of what is in store: the last peaches and first apples in the markets, a hint of red and brown in the leaves of trees that you try to tell yourself is a result of the heat stress of those burning days of July, but is of course an early hint of an approaching Fall. I’ve had my first orientations at the agency I’ll work with, via zoom, as most of my counselling will be. I’ve also been a little anxious about not getting the requisite number of group hours in practicum, and realise that I was a little, using the language I have learned over the last two years, avoidant in not addressing this earlier: I’m now exploring work at a second practicum site. One benefit of studying counselling — I’m increasingly able to look at myself and my behaviour with curiosity, and some compassion, even if I acknowledge I seem, increasingly as I age, to be even less able to change!

Last week, on a visit, I sensed a change on UBC campus. After a year and a half of silence, crowds had returned. Small knots of first year students were undergoing orientation in small herds, each group wearing identical t-shirts, and following a leader with a raised signboard. The cafes were full, and the buildings open. I went into Scarfe Building, where my first classes started two years ago, climbing the staircase to the classroom where my first seminar in the program was taught. Everything was gleaming, neatly arranged, waiting for the beginning of the semester, as if the pandemic had never happened. Next week the libraries will open, and I’ll most likely go back to my habit of studying at least a day a week in the plush Law Library in Allard Hall, with its wood panels, brushed aluminium fittings, and unearthly view out over the water of Burrard Inlet to the mountains that cluster at the entrance to Howe Sound. The Delta variant is still spreading, and case numbers are rising, but the university seems determined to make the return to face to-face learning work, with mask mandates and a requirement that students be vaccinated for access to some areas of campus.

Seeing the campus begin to come to life made me reflect on what I’ve lost in the last eighteen months. In an online discussion last year, I and a group of classmates each shared images to represent our experiences in the program so far. I shared a picture of Jericho Beach in the morning, where I used to walk before I drove or cycled up the hill to UBC for my counselling in Clinic. A place that I associated with the program, yes, but I think also a metaphor for the program as a time out, a time of waiting. One of my classmates, in contrast, shared a drawing of a tombstone, with “RIP Grad School” carved on it. COVID-19 has radically changed our graduate school experience: if it hasn’t quite killed it, has taken a large bite out of my graduate studies, and of the community I hoped I’d be part of. Graduate school hasn’t been what it was for me when I studied for my first masters’ and my doctorate, that time of seemingly unlimited, open, intellectual exchange. Yet I’m not quite sure why it has been different this time. COVID-19, certainly. Also the fact that I am much older, at a different life stage from most of my classmates: a lot of time I felt that I was holding back, a little guarded, rather than fully entering into discussions. I had a sense that this wasn’t just my age, but also the fact that as a person formed by a very different world, my values were different in ways I could not articulate. And perhaps the nature of the degree itself: I’m taking a professional degree that leads to a vocational career outside the university, and critical intellectual questions can, at best, often only be given a cursory glance before we move on. In counselling, perhaps, I still haven’t quite figured out the relationship between theory and practice. We learn a lot of theories that serve as models, which have their own internal consistency and often “work,” despite being founded on very questionable premises. These theoretical models are often discussed in great depth in research, and in textbooks. We are encouraged to adopt those we feel most comfortable with, and also to integrate them, but to do so in an intellectually coherent way, not to simply be eclectic. And yet in session, we often respond in a more intuitive and organic manner that may, of course, be contained within a theoretical framework, but which often exceeds it. In discussing this movement beyond theory, we often default to the “common sense” of person-centred concepts and notions of the human. I still want to find a new, different language to talk about what happens in session as an art, that somehow sees aesthetics as central to self-reflection, active acceptance, growth, and an engagement with the larger world.

In a week or two, I’ll meet my first clients, still remotely, and I’ll begin my final in-person class at UBC. The days will shorten, the leaves fall from the trees, the sky grow darker. In late December, it’ll be getting dark in the afternoon, rain will be falling. We’ll escape, when we can, to the snow on the mountains. And then the days will grow longer: daffodils, snowdrops, and crocuses will come, and cherry blossoms. If all goes well, I’ll graduate. I’ll have that sense again, perhaps, of that feeling I had almost thirty years ago, with my doctorate, of being somehow transformed and then re-entering the world with all its uncertainties.