January: The Month of "Leave Me the Hell Alone"
I’ve essentially been rejected from all the graduate schools I applied to, which I knew was going to happen (see blog from November). I still have a little hope for Wake Forest, but it’s kinda hard to be optimistic after seeing the beginnings of my career crushed under the stiletto heel of academia.
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I honestly don't understand why you didn't get in. I mean that as a compliment. I know you're hard-working and smart. Your grades are good. I can only assume it's due to lack of experience/publications and your GRE. Your experience, research, and publications are something you can continue to work on. Your GRE scores aren't bad at all and even a 100 point boost would make it more competitive. That can be done. The stress of school, coursework, and apps can give anyone a bit of senioritis. It may be different for you, but I performed better on it when my mind had a bit of a break from all of that. I was too sick of it otherwise.
A lot of people don't understand just how hard it is to get into Clinical Psych programs. I know it's tough. My education program was ridiculously easy to get into. It's life and bad health that caught up with me.
I hope I didn't offend you by suggesting the LCSW route that day. I didn't know that you were more interested in research than counseling. It is a less competitive way of being able to eventually counsel people. I don't think it's any worse or less noble than a PsyD though I'm sure the options beyond therapy are more limited. It's what a neighbor of mine opted for when she couldn't get into clinical psych.
I've found more luck with volunteering than internships. Most of the stuff I found was via the social work at UTK website where they have huge pdf files of internship sites. I researched some of these places online and cold called some of them. People may be more open to a volunteer than an intern. Experience is experience and a volunteer is usually given more flexibility. I know social work type stuff isn't clinical psych work, but a lot of it is similar to the case manager stuff I mentioned before. You're more of an objective ear and a liason for resources. There's definitely a psychiatric component and, to me, it's rewarding because your efforts are seen more immediately and tangibly. The pay is shit for case managers, but it's just an idea.
I hope you can stay on volunteering in the research psych labs at UT.
Your loans can be deferred due to your income and while they're higher than you'd like-they are far from unmanageable or absurd.
I don't know what it's like to get into a competitive program, but I do know what it is to be extremely stressed and impossibly frustrated. I know what it is to be sick of school, not know where to go next, and to be sick of course work. I know it doesn't feel like it, but a year may be a breath of needed fresh air that you need. It will allow you to beef up your resume and search for options all which will close the gap and help to turn your luck around.
I was testing in the 1150-1230 range on pretests for the GRE and honestly the few weeks of nothing school related AT ALL followed by a weekend of studying word lists (Barron's) helped me perform better than I thought I would on the actual test. I've known people to improve their scores by as much as 200 points by changing their approach/destressing. It's not impossible or unheard of.
The MA that would cut some time out of the program for the PhD while still allowing you to pursue research sounded great, too.
I hope I didn't piss you off or offend you then or now. It's hard to know what to say because I know you're disappointed and I feel awful about that, but for what it's worth-I truly believe you'll get there. Maybe not as soon as you hoped for, but your timeline is your own. Please don't see this as a failure, but a detour and perhaps an opportunity.
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I'll keep an eye out for case manager work. I'm just worried that if they knew I was only planning to stay for a year that they wouldn't hire me.
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