Like so many of us, my journey to figure out what I wanted for myself was not straightforward. Unlike those lucky few who know exactly what they want to do from elementary school, I still didn’t know what I wanted even after graduating from college. I majored in Psychology (and French) and graduated from a small, liberal arts school in the South East. I enjoyed psychology and my older sister is even a psychologist, however at that point I didn’t know if that was the path for me. Like so many do after graduating from college, I returned home and hoped that I would be able to find a good job, then eventually figure out what I wanted for the rest of my life.
Unfortunately, finding a decent job was incredibly difficult. I grew up in a small, rural area in the Midwest and there simply isn’t much around, especially mental health-related jobs. I started applying to anything I could, even if they were a decent commute away. I was keeping a list of all of the applications I submitted and the list grew to over 100, even with increasingly widening my net of the type of jobs I would be willing to consider. After months of applying and only being able to find minimum wage retail jobs, I eventually began to realize that I needed to go to graduate school if I wanted to do anything that sounded appealing to me.
I’ll skip through all the tedious-ness of applications, but I basically spent my whole fall after graduating from college writing essays, studying for the GRE, researching schools, and getting recommendation letters. I was only looking at PsyD programs as these seemed to fit my interests better. For those who don’t know, PsyD programs are more clinical and application focused while PhD programs have a much stronger emphasis on research. The downside is that while PhD programs are typically funded, PsyD programs are incredibly expensive (something I now have to think about now that student loan repayment is un-paused). PsyD programs are also generally easier to get into and, not having much research experience, I know that my chances of getting into a PhD program was slim.
I should probably take a step back and answer the question: Why the interest in psychology and mental health at all?
Like I mentioned, I grew up in a very rural area. People didn’t talk about mental health very much and there was a stigma around therapy. However, I grew up with one parent who went through periods of severe depression and another who suffered from addiction. Particularly with the parent who was depressed (my mom), I always felt this drive to help and do something. I realize now that there wasn’t much I could have done, especially as a teenager who didn’t know what was happening. That didn’t stop me from doing everything I could to try and help her feel better, even if that was often-futile attempts to engage her in conversation.
This experience growing up made me want to help others suffering from similar situations. I watched as many people in my life struggled in silence or believed they could power through something that they, in reality, didn’t need to or couldn’t do on their own.
Once I entered graduate school, I still didn’t even feel the pull to practice therapy until I was at the very end of my degree program. I was always interested in testing or forensics or one of the “cool” areas of psychology that you can specialize in. While I still find these areas interesting, it was only until I had some really great therapy experiences in my 4th-year practicum that I started to think therapy might be a good fit for me.
The final year of graduate programs in clinical psychology is a year-long internship, where you get much more in-depth and intensive experience. As I was beginning to look for post-doctorate positions at the end of internship, I was looking for experiences to work with clients on a long-term basis in individual therapy. I have now been doing this full-time for the past 2 years. While there are definite pros and cons to the work (something I’m sure I’ll talk about in more depth in a future post), I find a great deal of fulfillment in the work that I do.
My general advice for college students who feel such intense pressure to get settled in a career right away, is that sometimes you just need experience the “real world” and time away from college to really figure out what you want personally and what you can see yourself doing professionally going forward. We don’t all have deep passions that lead us to a lucrative career. Some people do and that is amazing. Would I say that I am absolutely passionate about psychology generally? No. There were times, even throughout graduate school, when I questioned whether the path I had chosen was right for me. Most of us are never sure. There are some days when I absolutely wish that I did something else for work, but I would argue that is likely a normal experience. Despite these feelings of self-doubt, I can lean on the knowledge that I have found something that brings me joy and energy, which is helping my clients better manage their anxiety, get through a breakup, work through a difficult experience, etc. Having that feeling (usually) makes the mountain of student loans feel worth it.