“If I were to say something to first-year me, I would definitely say start earlier. Start involving yourself in research; become more involved. I think a lot of people get into psychology and don’t really realize what it takes to actually do something with it after you get your bachelor’s. We’re not told about RA’ing or directed studies, or any of the kind of requirements: the GRE, the psychology subject test, all this stuff that you need to get into a master’s program. I think for me it would have been very helpful to know what was expected of me.”
“Were there any things that were prevented you from getting started sooner?”
“I think UBC is such a big university, I think I found it hard to find a niche and a community to get involved in. So I think for a long time I kept out of the larger UBC community… I think a lot of it had to do with the shift of coming out of high school, and all the sudden your grades are lower. I felt like I wasn’t as good as some of the people that were already involved in those kind of things… I honestly didn’t even comprehend what applying for a Master’s would look like: a lot of hours of work, good grades, a lot of volunteering, how hard the application would be.”
“How are you handling it all?”
“I’ve always been—if I have to get something done, then I just do it. So it hasn’t actually been too bad. First semester was busier because I was taking 5 classes and I was like working 2 jobs and doing 2 RA positions. So this semester I’m only doing 4 classes, so I have more room to do everything.”
“You seem like a very busy person. Do you ever have days where you just don’t do anything?”
“I do. But if I have too much of not doing something, I start to feel really restless, and I start to feel unfulfilled, and that I should be doing something.”