Thinking of studying Psychology in the future? Read on to hear from someone who’s doing exactly that.
There were only four kids in my entire Year 12 cohort. That’s probably because I grew up in a town that’s so far into rural Northern Victoria that they once forgot to print it on an old edition of Melways maps. So you can imagine my surprise when I walked into my first university lecture at the beginning of 2014 that was packed with over 500 people who’d all chosen the same Intro to Psychology subject as me. I’d never even had the chance to go to any tertiary open days, so I’d never seen so many people my own age before – let alone ones who were crouching in the aisles and filling every available spot in this lecture theatre just to hear someone talk about Psych. Suddenly I’d gone from a bright spark of a country town girl to being a mere drop in a hugely intimidating academic secondary.
And yet part of me was so thrilled to have been given this opportunity. I’ve been keen on Psychology ever since I knew what that word meant, but I’d had to study it via distance in Year 12 since my school had little on offer. On the weekends when I wasn’t working, I’d catch a bus two towns over to steal their library’s wifi and watch TED Talks about Psych. I can even remember reading through some of the subject reviews on ATAR Notes to try and get a feel for the course. Now, not only was there a veritable buffet of subjects I could choose (ranging from the mysteriously named “The Unconscious Mind” to the equally alluring “The Integrated Brain”) but there were so many other students whose interests overlapped with my own.
Psychology is one of the most popular areas of study within the Bachelor of Arts, and many students will opt to major in it alongside studies in Criminology, Politics, Education, and even Media Studies. Plus, the way courses at The University of Melbourne are structured means that you have to complement your areas of interest with other related and unrelated subjects. Although I was initially keen on a pure Psych major, the more I heard about and researched other units, the broader my interests became.
It helped that the Psych cohort was so diverse. There were those choosing it as one of their majors, like me, but there were also people from Biomedical and Music degrees who’d nominate Psych subjects for their breadths, meaning that in any given tutorial group of Psychology kids, there’d be a whole host of people with vastly different goals and experiences. In one of my second year subjects, I made great friends with a kid who wanted to be a neurologist specialising in forensic pathology. Later in the week, I’d be in one of my other Psychology tutorials, and I’d be in a room with a bunch of aspiring anthropologists and people who wanted to work in the criminal justice system.
And don’t even get me started on the teaching staff. I thought the student cohort was impressive, but that was before I found out how utterly interesting the lecturers and tutors were. You know how when high school teachers veer off topic and start ranting about their personal lives, and you just kind of tune out? Well that was not the case at uni! Some of my favourite memories from my degree have been the class discussions that were sparked by our tutor mentioning their background in psychiatry, or their research project that looked at the way children perceive morality.
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing, though. Moving from a town that had only recently come around to the whole ‘internet’ thing to one of the biggest capital cities in the country came with its own set of problems. I was quite overwhelmed for the first week or so, but my residential college was used to dealing with rural kids, so the integration process was smoother than it would have been if I were left to my own devices. And, naturally, the work and assignments were of a higher calibre than what I was used to. However, I think my interest in the subject matter far outweighed the difficulty factor. I still look forward to most assessment tasks because every time I complete them, I learn something cool and open up new avenues for myself.
Back in Year 11, our school organised a meeting for all the VCE kids and our careers counsellor (who was actually just our Biology teacher on his lunch break) but I distinctly remember him encouraging me to pursue Psychology as an area of interest. My parents were keen to push me down a Law/Med pathway, but the ‘lightbulb’ moment in choosing my tertiary future came at the end of 2012, just before I started Year 12. I was researching uni courses and potential careers when I realised that even reading about Law and Med industries made me either bored, sad, or overwhelmed. Whereas, when I looked into Psychology career tracks, I wanted to keep reading! I wanted to know as much as I could about this stuff, and I could see myself spending the rest of my life dealing with these kinds of theories.
I realise I’m one of the lucky ones who left high school with a pretty fully-fledged idea of where she wanted to end up. After I complete the last year of my undergraduate degree, I’m looking to continue my studies with Honours and perhaps even a Masters project. Ideally, I’d like to end up in a teaching or research position at uni, but I’m still trying to keep many other doors open in case I change my mind. So the only advice I have is the same (very true) cliché that was passed on to me from my Biology teacher careers counsellor: do what you love, and everything will work out in the end.
