Psychology majors, despite what our counterparts in biology, chemistry, and physics might think, don’t have it all that easy. At Western Washington University, our major has never been more popular – so popular, in fact, that you have to have at least junior status to get into the class you need to even declare for the major. Beyond that, it doesn’t get much better, because even once you’ve declared and claimed your territory, it’s almost impossible to get into any of the required classes. Most of my friends in the major are several quarters behind, and every quarter you fall behind is more money in the university’s pockets. But WWU’s psych bottleneck isn’t the subject of this article. At least, not quite.

The reason the psychology department is experiencing the academic equivalent of constipation is because of the set of required research classes at the beginning of the program. They’re only offered in two sections every quarter, and the number of students admitted to each section shrinks by 10 every quarter. But worse than that, they are, for a significant portion of psych students, wholly unnecessary. I’m not planning to be a research psychologist. Most of the people I talk to aren’t interested, either. So why is research the only thing the psychology department at Western wants to talk about?

Psychology is undergoing an identity crisis at the moment, and one of the treatment plans put forth is to pretend we’re exactly like the other -ology majors. Emphasize science, statistics, experiments, and the Holy Grail – published journal articles. Did you decide to major in psychology because you actually wanted to work with other human beings? Tough luck. You’ll be stuck in statistics hell for a year at least, and even after you graduate, there are precious few graduate programs that will give you the skills and practice you need to work with actual patients.

I’m not saying we should get rid of the research requirements entirely. Scientific research in the field of psychology is important, and evidence-based treatments are the best way to ensure that patients get the help they need. But there’s no reason why a whole year of research classes should be necessary. There are hard science majors who do less. There’s no reason why most professors in the psychology department should treat students who want to be clinicians with scorn and condescension. There’s no reason why the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of research-oriented students should be prioritized over students who want to apply psychology in the real world.

I don’t want to spend my entire working life in a lab poking sea slugs with joy buzzers to see how their tiny brains react. I also don’t want to spend my life putting psychology to use in order to convince people to buy things they don’t really need. I want to learn how to use the principles of psychology to give other people the tools they need to manage their own mental states and take control over their distressing thoughts and feelings. That’s a valid choice. It’s a decent choice. And it’s a choice that psychology departments in universities across the United States need to start respecting.