Studying psychology

Studying psychology sounds fun, right? Learning interesting information about the way we think... thinking about the interesting way in which we learn. Think of all of that knowledge and insight you will gain and how much that will help you help yourself and others. Finally, you will have answers to some of those pesky questions... what makes an individual unique? What is common about the human experience? Why do I hate myself? Why do some people go whacko and turn serial killer? Even better, you will be well paid for your knowledge and insight...

If this is your reason to study psychology, RUN.. right now, and never look back! If however, you want to either study without any specific aim to become a psychologist or without any career goal in mind, or study for 7+ years and become an academic researcher, or study for 5+ years and then spend the rest of your life learning, researching and developing skills to help people manage and overcome emotional, behavioural and cognitive conditions or deficits, psychology could just be for you! Still sounding fun?

Let me give you more of an idea of what this study looks like... 3 years full time for the Bachelor's degree (unless of course you already have an undergraduate degree, in which case a 1-2 year Diploma will often suffice), during which time you need to maintain an average grade of 80+ (75 minimum at a push) if you wish to proceed to the next step - the Honours degree or 4th year equivalent. If you think you will be learning counselling or clinical skills during the Bachelor's degree, think again - get very very comfortable with statistics and report writing, my friend, as these will be your closest companions during these years. Some Universities do offer placement, so you will get experience providing therapy through that, but not all undergraduate psychology degrees have placement, so often after completing 3 years you will be no more equipped to provide therapy to clients than before you started that degree.

Now say you manage to maintain sufficiently high grades to gain access to the highly coveted Honours or 4th year (which by the way, is a mandatory requirement of becoming a psychologist), you've made it right? You can now cruise along through this degree? Well, that depends on if you still wish to become a psychologist or not, because for that to happen you will still need a minimum of 1 more year of study (as of June 2022), so make sure you keep maintaining those good grades! The 4th year is made up of a research project (thesis) and coursework, so unless you are assigned one of the very limited qualitative research projects (which opens up a whole new world of 'what the hell am I doing' after 3 years of learning only quantitative research), prepare for lots more statistics and report writing... and reading... oh so much reading. You will be given a somewhat broad research topic by your supervisor (hope you get along with them, by the way!) which you will need to narrow down and to do that, you will be reading hundreds of published research articles to write your 5000 word literature review/introduction (which is the beginning of the research project). That's right - still no counselling/practical training in the 4th year.

Let's say you stop there and decide that further study is not for you - then what can you do with those 4 years of study? Well, until June 2022 you can apply for an internship as a provisional psychologist if you still wish to pursue psychology, but unless you have completed your 4 years by now or very close to, you are unlikely to get into that in time before the cut off next year. So then what? Well, if you decide after 4 years not to pursue a career as a psychologist, you can try case work or HR or child protection services or counselling - of course, you could have pursued these careers with much less study and been better prepared with a degree specific to those careers. In particular, if counselling is your end goal then just do a counselling degree - unlike 'psychologist', 'counsellor' is not a protected title in Australia, meaning theoretically that anyone can call themselves a counsellor with no specific training/education required. Many people gain experience doing volunteer work, or just study one degree and they're done - no 4th, 5th, 6th year etc. and you will gain much more practical experience during that degree than you would studying psychology.

Still wanting to be a psychologist? Ok then, time for the 5th year, often known as a Master of Professional Psychology - finally you will gain some placement and clinical experience, if you haven't had placement up to this point. If you have managed to continue working reasonable hours up to now to keep earning a living, this will likely change during this year - the course commitments are usually too great to continue working more than 10-15 hours per work, so I hope you have some savings or a sugar daddy/mumma. After the 5th year, you can go straight into a 1 year internship working as a provisional psychologist (which doesn't pay all that great, even though you've just busted your butt for 5 years). This internship is not all fun and games either - the application alone can take hours to complete. Then once you're in, prepare to fill in log books and write case reports and ethical dilemma reports, and usually all in your free time - not many employers will pay you for this time. You will also complete a national exam during this year, so study study!

And what does a day of therapy with clients look like? Let's look at a typical day of 5 clients (which is considered a reasonable amount)... sure, you spend an hour with each client, so that's just a 5 hour day so far, but don't forget you need to read the referral/case notes/handover notes etc. for those clients before they come in and get an understanding of what they're coming in for and how you might proceed with the session. Then when they leave, make sure you write up those notes - this alone can take up 30 minutes when you're new to this. And finally, case formulation - you can't just listen to them, write up some notes and be done - how will you be helping this client? What will you do in the next session? Do they need referrals to other services? Do you need to write reports to third parties (employer, GP)? In between all of this, you will have phone calls, emails to attend to, invoicing and general admin. Then of course once you're done with that, you have your internship requirements, professional development requirements and exam preparation study. Oh and I forgot to mention, this 1 year internship can often take 2-3 years to complete, as it can be difficult to attain employment that fulfils all of the internship requirements and provides the requisite client contact hours for completion.

Internship not for you? Well, you can always go onto a 6th year of study instead and be eligible for general registration at the end of this, without the need to sit the national exam. Or you can go straight from the 4th year into a 3 year PsychD, which is a doctorate degree which also includes clinical coursework. So if you get those good grades and are still happy to keep studying after 4 years - what's another 3 years? After this 6 or 7 year pathway, you must be done right? Well, that depends... sure, you will be eligible for registration as a general psychologist, but if you wish to be endorsed as a clinical/forensic/educational and developmental etc. psychologist (which is often the reason people continue beyond 5th year study), I'm afraid you're not done quite yet. Next up you have a 1-2 year endorsement program with a supervisor, a little similar to the 1 year internship after 5th year, except you're likely to be paid better and the requirements are not quite so strenuous. And then yes, you're done... all that's left now is to maintain your registration and insurance and continue your professional development by keeping up to date with the latest research.

Studying psychology sounds fun, right? I'll leave it to you to decide if it's worth it.