OK, so I wanted to be a psychologist, I’ve wanted this for some time. Basically I need my Ph.D. in psychology. In the meantime I need some clinical experience.
So I start college early (I only went to H.S. for 2 years). I go for 4 years to get my bachelor’s…except I don’t get it, I needed an extra year. (freshman year I figured out girls existed…and yeah you know the rest).
So anyhow, I take a year off after my 4th year, and do IT consulting. The money is decent, 16/hr roughly which for me is like gold because I can really pinch a penny. I go back to college, and get my Bachelor’s in psychology, in May of 07. I decide to go into a clinical MSW program in Boston. While there I’m at a clinical internship providing counseling for individuals, and groups.
After one year I decide the program isn’t clinical enough and I’d rather shoot for my Ph.D. in psychology, rather than wasting another year in the MSW program. I apply, and get this, I never hear back from the programs. I call them up, and they say no word. I don’t get in, I don’t get rejected, nothing. nada. Like I don’t exist.
So in the meantime I’m applying for jobs that require a BA in psychology, and I can’t get a fucking break. I’m not even talking glamorous jobs, I’m talking like 12/hr type shit and they want you to work with kids that WILL stab you, and they expect you to work the 4-midnight shift and then come in for 8 the next morning.
So I have a BA, a year’s worth of master’s level counseling education, and a year’s clinical experience. Should be a shoe-in, right? Wrong. I haven’t received a fucking offer yet, and I’ve been looking for months. This education system makes no sense. I was earning more with no bachelor’s, in the IT field, than I am in the psychology field with experience and a degree. Hell I can’t even GET a job in the psychology field with those qualifications.
It’s like you have to put yourself into massive debt to get this degree, and unless you’re a doctor or a lawyer you’re going to spend the rest of your life living off the crumbs of people in those fields, at or near poverty, all because you wanted your bachelor’s and to help people, or work in a field besides medicine or law. Fucking ridiculous.