2 Weeks and I’ll have a B.A.

/Other Things

In 2 weeks, I’ll have finished all the junk I need to have completed my bachelors degree. Bachelors degrees seem to be the terminal degree for most, but for me, I’ve never felt that was the end. So what have I learned in Psychology? Well, here are the classes I’ve taken, in order of when I took it:

  1. Quantitative Methods in Psychology
  2. Developmental Psychology
  3. Professional & Career Issues in Psychology
  4. Dynamics of Personality
  5. Experimental Psychology
  6. Organizational Theory
  7. Social Psychology
  8. Cognitive Processes
  9. History of Psychology
  10. Human Resource Management
  11. Abnormal Psychology
  12. Psych. Disorders of Children
  13. Clinical & Counseling Methods I
  14. Psychology of Women
  15. Introduction to Counseling Technique

So there you go. Add on some Independent Reading
& Research and a healthy portion of Senior Honors Project, and there’s what I’ve taken.
What did I learn? Psychology is NOT sitting in a chair while someone on a couch spills their life’s story to you. This is what many people THINK psych is, and those people need to fall off a cliff…
Wake up – Psychology is all around us. It is more pervasive in our lives than biology – after all, what good would life be if psychological interactions didn’t take place? Its more volatile (in some cases) then chemistry, more predictable (in some cases) than physics. Its a hell of a lot more interesting than History or Art. And to those of you in Economics, Sociology, and Cultural Humanities – Double Wake Up – You’re just studying portions of psychology (i.e. The Psychology of token economies, The psychology of groups, and the cross-cultural psych). Business major? Gonna be the next big MBA to hit Wall St. since last night? you’re studying I/O psychology, with an emphasis on profit.
Hope I’ve made it clear to you – psychology is not the same as therapy – so get it straight world: In 5 or so years when I have my PhD, I won’t have a ‘practice’, I won’t see patients, and I deffinetly won’t be able to tell you why your anorexic nazi eskimo sister stopped dating the bipolar pro wrestling promoter. I will, however, be able to tell you what I’ve proven statistically about how the mind works, and how behavior can be monitored, predicted, and analyzed. Don’t like that kind of psychology? Tough.