"What's the difference between a psychologist and a magician?
A magician pulls rabbits out of hats, whereas a psychologist pulls habits out of rats."
At some point in your life, for whatever reason, you chose the path to be a psychology major. Maybe it was because you want to understand what makes people the way they are. Maybe it was because you have a passion for helping people. Or maybe you just stumbled across it in a course catalog at college. Anyhow, in the choose-your-own-adventure that is your life, you have decided that you want to be a psychology major. With the major comes the following things you know to be true.
5) People assume you can read minds.
Somehow, psychic and psychologist have been mixed up. When asked what you are studying, many of us know the agony of hearing the response: “Oh, so you can read minds?!” No, unfortunately, we cannot. We cannot connect with the dead, know what you are thinking, and honestly, we have enough going on in our own heads to try and read yours.
4) We are not psycho-analyzing your every move.
If people do not think that we can read minds, we usually get the “Oh, man you probably are trying to figure out what is wrong with me, right now!” or “I am not going to say much because you will figure out what is wrong with me.” Neither of which we are doing. If we are having a conversation with you, the last thing we probably want to talk about is what events from your childhood have shaped you into the person you are today. We spend hours researching, reading, and writing papers about psychology, when we are socializing we just want a break.
3) At some point, we have contemplated why we have chosen this major.
Do not get us wrong, we love psychology. There are so many branches of psychology that the education is nonstop. However, by the time you start your undergrad/grad research, you wonder how much have you actually learned over the course of the past few years. Your research takes a lot of time and creates a lot of stress. This means for many of us, we wonder if it will all be worth it. Of course, the answer is yes! However, it does not mean that the course of our studies has been easy. We have spent countless hours learning about the fields of psychology, the case studies, the analysis of research, etc. It can be overwhelming at times. However, we know we want to make a difference.
2) We may geek out over weird things
If you ask us what we are watching on Netflix, there is a good chance we might be binge watching documentaries about the Stanford Prison Experiment, Stanley Milgram, or even numerous shows about murderers, experiments, etc. We love to learn about the history of psychology, the mind, and what makes people, people. Give us a day off and you can find us on the couch curled up either reading about psychology or watching something about it. How far psychology has come from its eerie, early days is amazing.
1) We love our fellow psych pals.
The whole “birds of a feather, flock together” could not be more corny or true for us. It does not matter if we have known each other for a minute or the entire course of study, psych majors are incredibly welcoming! We know how tough it can be and we are understanding. We also are random and weird, which means we laugh a lot. There is something comforting about the psych lounge, where we can unwind from class. We can come up with mom dad jokes about psychology. (*Insert joke about Freud) We are one big, dysfunctional family.
