Dea Every Other Major,
As you, our friends, complain about your majors, we sit there and nod our heads and give feedback. But in our heads, we are thinking something completely different. Oh, you’re a business major who has to write a paper as your final? Well, try having a whole class that is required to take that is basically writing papers all semester, when our goal is not to become a writer.
Think that is all we are doing in the class? Nope, we also have quizzes/tests on all of the material while being expected to write these papers. And not only is it regular papers, these are papers that involve extensive research, and it’s up to us as the writer to be able to understand the material and studies since half of the material is something that isn’t heard every day in class.
So it takes even more time to write these papers. And after you have done your research, you will probably have to work with statistics in some kind of way. Oh, but don’t worry about that because there is a whole class devoted to having to do statistics, which usually isn’t the only math class that we have to take while we are in college. And you may think well I have taken an Intro to Psychology or Psychology 101 class and it doesn’t seem too difficult. Well, congratulations to you for getting through the easiest class of our major. It only gets harder from there.
Do you know how many different branches of psychology there are? Child, social, industrial, experimental, family and educational psychology are some, just to name a few. Which means that, during our studies, we need to take courses that are on a very broad platform just to get an idea of these different branches and what they entitle. Not every psychologist does the same kind of work. We don’t just sit in an office all day and counsel people. There is so much more to it.
So, one counseling class taken in college isn’t going to make us the best counselors in the world; there are so many other things that have to be brought into consideration. We must be educated in human behavior but we can’t learn everything about this just from one class. And if we know what kind of path we want our psychology major to take us on, then we need to make sure we take all the right classes and even completing things outside of the classroom in order to get there.
We hear you guys worry about not being able to find a job after your undergrad, and this is a worry for us too, but we also have the worry of not getting into grad school. Our options are limited when it comes to getting a job right out of undergrad, so a lot of us like to go right to graduate school.
Even if we do everything that is required by us, like taking our GREs, having a vita, applying to a ton of schools, doing research and internships, it is still a worry of not getting in because of how competitive these programs are. All through this, though, not once will you hear us say that this isn’t worth it to us or that we want to give up. Because, at the end of the day, we want to be able to help the people that need us.
Sincerely,
Psychology Majors
