This morning, as I realized I was driving in for my last Tuesday of classes this semester, it really hit me that I'm at the end of the second year of my training already! Time has done strange things since I started grad school. On the one hand, it has gone very fast- it feels like just yesterday that I was starting my orientation in the summer before my first year. On the other hand, I feel so different from when I started that it sometimes feels like a lot more than two years have gone by. There have been some huge changes in my personal life but I think it's the whole 'developing professional self' thing that has really astounded me. To me, this has included (in no particular order)...
- Professional Confidence- this category is huge and encompasses new feelings of competence doing the in-the-trenches work of a psychologist, appreciation of what there is still to learn (and trusting that I'll figure it out when the time comes), a sense of professional identity and a loose understanding of long-term career aspirations.
- Personal Confidence- harder to articulate, but something feels different, more complete and secure. Perhaps it's just the sense of 'at last I've found the career I want,' and the attendant satisfaction and feelings of resolution, after so much time spent searching and preparing.
- Public speaking- always scary, but much less painful.
- How I think- In some really basic way, my thinking itself has shifted since I started my training. Some might say I "think like a psychologist," but I don't think that's entirely it. I think there is an enhanced critical thinking, curiosity and openness that people learn in all kinds of doctoral trainings- it's not exclusive to psychologists. That said, surely there is something about being trained as a psychologist that gives it a unique flavor- perhaps a mix of:
scientific rigor
healthy skepticism
tolerance for uncertainty, nuance, subtlety
listening skills
open-heartedness
respect for individual experience
enhanced self-understanding.
- Writing- I've always been reasonably confident as a writer, but even moreso now after doing so much of it in the last two years! It's weird, nobody officially re-sets the bar, rings a bell and tells you to start writing at the 'graduate level' (vs. the undergraduate level), but somehow it happens. I think, in part, it's from the required readings becoming more complex and sophisticated, and the natural tendency to mimic that voice when doing my own writing.
Just a few of the articulable changes over the last few years...
kate.
- Location:Back in Massachusetts
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