Becoming a Clinical Psychologist Essay Example

field that there is to know. I also want to know things from the inside, and what this career is really like, and not just a front. That’s probably my curious nature playing again, but I’m sure it will only help me to learn much more about this career. While beginning my research, I started with an interview from a professional in the field.

I found him through my father (they were friends and served together in the military) and he was more than happy to do this interview with me. So, I e-mailed him a few questions about the field. His name is Norman Jones who is currently serving in Iraq as a psychologist on base to help soldiers get through stress of war. Previously, he had worked in a private clinical setting which is just the profession I’m researching on. Before this, I wanted to learn about the insiders of the field that you don’t learn in the books or other sources.

This was the perfect chance I thought, to get some real, surprising information. It was definitely what I wanted it to turn out to be. After my interview with him through e-mail, I learned a lot of inside things that I thought were important. I learned about 34% of psychologists are self-employed. I also learned that clinical psychology is just a grain of sand in the countless number of jobs you can pursue with psychology. I think this is surprising only because I’m not used to a degree having so many different fields available to it.

Finally, the most important thing I think I learned with this interview was that the interviewee told me

that if I wanted to make it in this career field, you have to want to help people genuinely from the heart; you can’t expect to be anything special without that characteristic. He just seemed to baffle me because I didn’t expect someone who didn’t even know me to get so worked up and passionate about the interview. That was great, but I still had a long ways to go in this research, I still needed to know about the educational aspect, and I also needed to be sure of this field and give myself another support source to read on.

I went to look for colleges next. I wanted to know what schools had good programs, or a program that would be suitable for me at the least. I came upon Eastern Michigan University. They focus on the behavioral and environmental approaches to psychology, which is the focus I put myself in. Aside from that, I learned a whole lot about how hard it would be to get where I wanted to go with this career. I looked under the “programs” tab under their websites page. There, they had a whole list of majors that a full-time student could have.

I clicked on “Psychology Major” where I found all the info I needed to know about getting a degree in psychology. There I found out how many credits I would need to gain a Ps. Y. D in psychology. The number was staggering; I will need 178 credit hours to earn a Doctorate. I also learned that they have professors who specialize in the areas in which I am most interested in learning about psychology. This

is the most significant thing to me, since I will have the opportunity to learn what I want to in great depth. These along with other smaller things I learned.

I got pretty much all I wanted to learn about the educational aspect of clinical psychology. I still had a couple things to learn about this career, from a perspective different from my interviewee’s. It may not have been as good as the interview, but still it would be a good, formal source. So, I went to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to find an article on clinical psychology, hoping I could find something out. When I opened the web page I typed into the search engine, ‘clinical psychology’ and it brought up a whole list of articles on psychology.

It took me a while to find an article that had good content and was of use to me. But, eventually, I did find one and I learned some more I didn’t think I was going to learn. One thing I learned that was pretty good was the average work hours and the average pay. I learned that on average, an experienced clinical psychologist will make anywhere from 80,000 to 120,000 dollars a year. I also read that the minimal amount of hours a psychologist will work to have a well-built career, which is around 40 to 60 hours a week.

Lastly, I read about the laws and regulations of being a clinical psychologist, which was the most important part to me. I read about many different laws and one for example was that it is against the law to release any information about your patients unless required

by the court, or requested and agreed upon by both the patient and the guardians. (If your patient happens to be a minor. ) After reading this article and getting some good information on it, I think that it only helped my liking for this career field.

When I was done researching this paper and I sat down to think about what I’ve come away with. When I sat down originally to write this research paper, I wasn’t all that thrilled, I can’t lie about that. Although, when I got to writing, I began to start thinking about the career, and what it means to me. I remembered that the reasons why I wanted to get into this career were much larger than the paper itself. So I learned a lesson from this paper, I learned that you have to fill the holes within, to find purpose. You need to open your mind and soul.

That’s the best thing that I learned. I don’t have that many questions left over after my research. Really, this career search explained itself to me, step-by-step. My plan is to graduate from high-school, and go to Schoolcraft Community College. After I complete my pre-required classes there, I will transfer to Eastern Michigan University. There I will major in clinical psychology and go for Ph. D. Maybe I’ll publish a story one day too, but that’s on another note. I hope to accomplish all of my aspirations in life after researching this field of work.