“Looking back to my school, I would say it was a pretty horrible school experience. A lot of it required a lot of unlearning. We were never ever taught the basics of the scientific method. We just started off with science and were like “here’s atoms!”. That kind of philosophical basis and the way you think about science was a huge thing I had to struggle with throughout my second year when I started taking psychology.
The community around me growing up did not know what psychology was. I’d say the best of it was when people knew who Freud was. A huge part of it was “psychology is crazy people” or “everyone knows what is, you don’t need to study that”. I didn’t actively hold those beliefs but that is something that was implicitly in my head keeping me away from psychology even though I was interested in it. Luckily, I had great professors for 101 and 102 so it ended up being a nice experience. For 102 I had Simon Lolliot, I spent so much time after classes just sitting and talking to him.
It’s been a rollercoaster ride honestly. Being introduced to the problem with psychology itself, the whole WEIRD problem [with Ara Norenzayan]. That, put together with my environmental studies, pushed me to the direction where I am now. I’m looking at the cultural and social ways we relate to the environment. I constantly am able to question the field I’m in itself because of these people that I worked with.”