I started my college career out being a humanities major. I wasn’t sure what else to major in, so I majored in what I thought I was good at and hoped for the best. Somewhere along the line during my first semester, I decided I was going to switch to psychology and I was going to be a clinical psychologist (which has since changed.)
Awesome. I was ready. And, as I soon found out, like every major out there, being a psychology major has its own unique experiences and clichéd reactions from other people that almost anyone majoring in psychology can relate to.
1. “Oh you’re a psychology major? So, are you analyzing me right now?”
Come on, now. This is actually a pretty common remark, and you’re not the first person to ask me this. This isn’t an episode of “Criminal Minds,” and I’m not your therapist. Analyzing people isn’t easy, and it’s not something that I, or really any normal person, can do within the first few minutes of meeting someone else, especially while trying to hold a coherent, informal conversation without coming across as kind of creepy.
2. Except… I kind of am.
Not in the sense that my inner Freud -- which is kind of like an inner demon, only less backwards Latin and more “Everything is sex, always” -- is starting to leak, but in the sense that I might be a little more likely to understand WHY you’re behaving the way you are. Maybe. But, I’m still not holding a metaphorical clipboard and taking notes on your behavior in order to mull upon it later while smoking my metaphorical pipe because I: a. don’t care and b. really don’t care.
3. “Wow, so are you going to be a therapist?”
Yeah, you know, I thought I was going to, but the beautiful thing about college is that it’s such a learning experience, and I learned that I don’t want to listen to people’s problems for eight hours a day, five days a week. I also learned that there’s so much more to my major than just being a clinical/counseling psychologist, and that it takes wonderful, saintly people, of which I am not, to be therapists. Plus, there’s actually quite a few options in the field of psychology that you can go into provided that you’re…
4. Going to graduate school.
I kind of knew I was going to have to do this, but it wasn’t until I was burned out during the spring semester of my junior year and realized that I was going to have to do at least another two years in graduate school in order to get a job in this field, whatever that might be because I definitely wasn’t going to be a clinical psychologist anymore. Thankfully, I remembered that school counselors exist and decided that was what I wanted to do, but that still includes graduate school, so graduating with my undergraduate degree is basically just my ticket into more school.
5. “Psychology huh? That’s kind of hard, isn’t it?”
Well, it’s certainly not easy. Psychology is definitely a science, whether some individuals like to admit it or not, and analyzing humans isn’t easy, since a lot of what we’re looking for can be hard to observe and understand. Counseling psychology also possesses a certain art in it as well -- almost everyone can learn the techniques for counseling, but not everyone can be effective with them.
6. You’re understand yourself WAY better than you ever thought you could, or wanted to.
Seriously, just when you think you’ve learned basically everything about yourself, something new pops up and it’s the COOLEST. THING. Except, it’s the kind of cool thing where, initially, you feel way too self-aware and that you might need to take a break from life for just a second. But, afterwards, it’s REALLY AWESOME.
7. And then, there’s those times that will make your heart and mind sing.
There are two things that have been said to me that will always stick with me:
“Talking to you really helped me, thank you, so much.” (After using some simple counseling techniques to help a friend.)
“You’re studying psychology, huh? I have a lot of respect for therapists and psychologists, and it’s so great that you’re doing that.” (A patron at the library I work at said that to me one day, and not only will I always remember it, but it’s a great quote to grab from the recesses of my mind when I need a self-esteem boost.)
And then, there are the countless times where I’ve found such emotional and mental reward in learning about psychology. It’s so easy to get excited about stuff you learn in your psychology classes, at least for me, because I mean, it’s crazy interesting, but you learn and understand so much about yourself and other humans that you can’t help but want to share it with other humans. And, if you’re into counseling psychology, that psychological reward happens when you know you’ve actually helped someone who was struggling and needed your help. Or, if you’re into research psychology, it’s when, after all that work, you’ve found the connection you were hoping to find in your research. Sure, we may all have small inner Freuds running around inside of us now (he is inescapable) and psychology takes a lot of work on a few different levels (including the pesky social ones regarding not rolling your eyes at the fifth time someone's asked you if they're analyzing them), but personally, I’ll always think it’s worth it.
