Category Archives: Graduate School

In Case You Missed It!

ICYMI2The gradPSYCH Blog has had some amazing guest contributors since its inception in 2015. Our newer followers may have missed some great content from older posts that is still quite relevant today. In case you missed it….

9 Mentorship GIFs I Wish Someone Had Shown Me in Grad School

Need a chuckle? Daniel Reimer’s post on Mentorship GIFs will give you a laugh while providing some useful tips to help you find the mentorship you need.

Speak Up: Giving a Memorable Presentation

Who doesn’t appreciate advice on how to give a stellar presentation? Public speaking may not be your thing but it is an important skill to have in the field of psychology. Melissa Foster provides tips and resources to help ease a fear of public speaking.

The Academic Hunger Games: Are the Odds in Your Favor?

Can graduate school be seen as an academic version of the Hunger Games? If so, what can you do to improve your odds? Here are some thoughts…..

Are there any topics you’d like covered by gradPSYCH Blog? Let us know in the comment section!

 

Dear Me, Future Psychologist. Yours truly, Dr. Alison Gopnik

Check out our latest installment of Dear Me, Future Psychologist, a gradPSYCH Blog exclusive in which a prominent psychologist writes a letter to their 16-year-old self. We hope you enjoy these letters and glean some invaluable wisdom and guidance as you decide whether to enter graduate school in psychology, as you navigate the challenges of graduate school, and as you make decisions about your career and life.

Gopnik photo really hi-res tiff (002)This letter is from Dr. Alison Gopnik. Dr. Gopnik is a professor of psychology and affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley, where she has taught since 1988. She received her BA from McGill University and her PhD. from Oxford University. She is a world leader in cognitive science, particularly the study of children’s learning and development. She is the author of over 100 journal articles and several books including the bestselling and critically acclaimed popular books “The Scientist in the Crib” William Morrow, 1999, “The Philosophical Baby; What children’s minds tell us about love, truth and the meaning of life” Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2009,  and  “The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the new science of child development tells us about the relationship between parents and children” Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2016. She is a fellow of the Cognitive Science Society and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

She writes the Mind and Matter science column for the Wall Street Journal. And she has also written widely about cognitive science and psychology for The New Yorker, Science, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, New Scientist and Slate, among others. She has frequently appeared on TV and radio including “The Charlie Rose Show” and “The Colbert Report”. Her TED talk has been seen over 2.75 million times. She has three sons and three grand-children and lives in Berkeley, California with her husband Alvy Ray Smith.

DEAR-ME

FROM THE DESK OF ALISON GOPNIK:

May 2017

Dear Me,

Now by all the rules, you should be the one who is hesitant and uncertain, just starting out in life as you are, and I should be the one who’s figured it all out – I have the very unfair advantage, after all, of knowing how things will turn out. But, knowing you as I do, I’m afraid it’s mostly going to be the reverse. You are so sure about who you are and what you’re going to do, and most of my wisdom is a lifetime’s accumulation of doubt, even about the most fundamental biographical facts.

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Considering a Career in Aging – Settings (Part 2)

HospitalDeciding on a career working with older adults, or perhaps more specifically Geropsychology involves understanding the types of settings where you might find this population. Perhaps the best place to start is in long-term care, as it is usually what people imagine when they think of Geropsychology (I will hopefully inform this notion a bit better!)

Long-term care facilities are, in a nutshell, places where anyone who may need skilled nursing services can live with the level of care they need. This means that you might encounter residents who are not older adults, but they are in need of nursing care. Not only is nursing care provided, but commonly social work, dietary services, recreational services, chaplain services, psychological services, and of course holistic medical care.

Long-term care homes are typically referred to as skilled nursing facilities or SNF’s (pronounced “sniff’) by those working in these integrated care settings. Yes! That’s right! Working with older adults in these settings is considered integrated care. This is another advantage to doing this type of clinical work, not only do you get exposure to work with older adults, you also learn about functioning in your professional role within a group of other providers from various disciplines. Check out Psychologists in Long-Term Care (PLTC) as this is a great place to start exploring this option and they provide a wealth of resources about this very special work.

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Considering a Career in Aging (Part 1)

In graduate school, much of what you learn is about yourself, more specifically, grad school asks of you to be insightful. This look inward may include a reflection on the kind of psychological services you want to provide, research you wish to conduct, and who you would most like to work with in your professional career. Many graduate students may consider working with adults, children, couples, Veterans, the incarcerated, LGBTQ, racial and/or ethnic minorities, or those who may be most vulnerable in our society. If you find that you want to work individuals that come from all those parts of life, then I have a suggestion…older adults!

You may ask, what exactly does the term “older adults” mean? Well, it generally is meant to refer to adults 55 years of age and older. Using the term “older adults” is generally received as more acceptable than “elderly,” or “senior,” but there is no hard and fast rule about which term to use. As the awareness around the culture of being an older adult grows, so do appropriate evidence-based treatments, considerations in assessment, and expectations around what “normal” functioning look like.

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4 Tips to Help you Become a Better Editor

“Write like you’re in love. Edit like you’re in charge.” – James Scott Bell

EditingHere on the APAGS blog we’ve previously offered some tips on how to become a better scientific writer, addressing ways to make it easier to put words onto paper (and finish your thesis/dissertation/manuscript!). But good writing mostly happens in between drafts one and two … or 19 and 20, as editing your own work effectively is consequential to getting your point across. So to pay homage to the skill that is fine-tuning, below I’ve assembled some tips to help you become a better editor. Hopefully they will help you transform your original ideas into digestible content.

Edit as if you were another person

You will always be your best editor when you can look at your writing from the vantage point of your audience. First, this helps remove the emotional baggage from reviewing your own piece, whether this involves feeling as if you are not good enough or – just as dangerous – as if you are Nobel Prize worthy. While we always want to feel invested in our work, and proud of the pieces we put forth, much about writing effectively has less to do about you, and everything to do about your reader. So try forgetting for a moment that you wrote what’s in front of you and ask yourself: what is the author trying to convey here? Answering this question time and again will help you identify areas that are either not clear enough or need reframing.

Print out your draft

I’m not usually an advocate for printing many things on paper these days, but when editing your writing you may consider making an exception. Seeing words on paper simply has a different effect on a reader versus seeing them on a screen. Plenty has been written about this topic, enough to ensure me that I’m not the only one that feels this way. So if your stuck in your writing and unsure how to move it forward, print out what you have thus far and read it away from your computer. Annotate edits in the margins (for old time’s sake). Another tip is that if you have multiple pages already complete, start with printing just page one and go from there. Often you’ll notice that there is something to attend to early on and you’ll need to change it right away before moving forward. So save your paper (and toner) and go one page at a time.

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