Here are the experience of a psychology student which
gives a brief view on what you learn if you choose psychology.
1.
You get introduced to various fields in Psychology. In
your first year, you will generally be taking an introduction course.
Fortunately, I still have my textbook with me so let me share with you the
outline of the topics. The book is ”Psychology 8th edition” by David G. Myers
and here are the topics: Neuroscience and behavior, nature, nurture, and human
diversity, developmental, sensation, perception, states of consciousness,
learning, memory, thinking and language, intelligence, motivation work, emotion, stress, health, personality,
psychological disorder, therapy, and lastly social psychology. As you can see,
there are so many different area. Psychology is just a broad term describing
the study of human behaviors and thought processes. At the end of day, there
are so many subtopics and you will discover which field you like and specialize
in it.
2.
Specialization. This is when you find out which field you
like most and want to have a job related to it in the future. Most psychology
students begin specializing near 3rd or
final year of study. However, I declared my major in psychology in the middle
of year 2 so I didn’t really specialize. However, what I did was I took a bunch
of psychology courses and I try to learn a little bit of each. Furthermore,
actual specialization is when you enter graduate school and have began doing
your own research onto a specific domain.
3.
There are a lot of readings. The question I often get asked from
you guys is is psychology hard to study? My personal answer is it’s just like
any other subjects (math or science). How hard something is is based on how
passionate you feel about what you are studying. The more passionate you are,
the easier studying seems because you are more motivated to overcome the
difficulties to learn. Psychology is however, a lot of readings and
memorization. For each exam, classes generally cover 4 or 5 chapters. This is
equivalent of 4 or 5 topics and within each topics are 20-30 pages of text
materials that you have to memorize.
4.
There are many career options. The other question I get
asked a lot is what are the jobs available for psychology. My answer is there
are lot of jobs, but then to really make money with psychology, you need to
have a graduate degree. A graduate degree requires 6-7 years on top of your 4-5
years bachelor if you want to get a PhD. If you are going for a Masters which
is popular if you are wanting to become a counselor/therapist then that is
another 2-3 years instead of the 6-7.
For a list of psychology jobs, you can visit this link.
5.
Psychology is not about mind reading. I think the general public
thinks that psychology is studying how to read other people’s thoughts, but the
truth is psychology is a scientific field on how to do and understand research.
Psychology is not learning how to tell when someone likes you or what goes
through someone’s head when they are upset, but on research on telling you
about the factors that contribute to attraction or facts about depression.
Psychology is more about feeding you information than teaching you the process
of mind reading.
6.
Psychology is not about teaching you how to help people.
Initially, when I went into psychology, I thought one main skill I would get
out of it was learning how to help people such as giving good advice. However,
it turns out that psychology is not that. Psychology is about teaching you
facts and theories of the human thought processes. Counseling is what teaches
you how to help someone and this is where you should go into if you want to
learn this.
7.
My overall experiences. Psychology has helped me a lot in my
personal life because it gave me insights to personal problems and it has
helped me develop a framework on how people think. Unlike before when I was in
high school and I didn’t take psychology, I had to form theories about why
people do this or that on my own. Taking psychology has helped me solidify my
theories and gave me additional understanding on human patterns or ways of
behaving.
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