Tag Archives: self care

One year out: Life after the diploma

While I love seeing graduation pictures of friends and colleagues on Facebook, it makes me think what a sudden change life brings after the celebration wears off. It seemed like one day I was knee-deep in dissertation data, and the next day I was hanging my new diploma on the wall of my new job here at APA. The transition from graduate student to early career psychologist (ECP) is fast, and sometimes furious. I asked three graduates from one year ago how they navigated life after the diploma.

Meet the grads:

Rachel Becker Herbst is a 2013 graduate of the Counseling Psychology PhD program at the University of Miami and a postdoctoral fellow in Pediatric Primary Care at Children’s Hospital Colorado.
Amanda Kraha is a 2013 graduate of the PhD program in Experimental Psychology from the University of North Texas and will be a lecturer at Indiana University East this fall.
Steven Kniffley is a 2013 graduate of the PsyD program in Clinical Psychology from Spalding University School of Professional Psychology and a Child and Adolescent Acute Services Psychology fellow at Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School. He will be an assistant professor in Wright State University’s School of Professional Psychology this fall.

What has surprised you thus far about being on the other side of the doctorate?

Rachel Becker Herbst and her advisor, Dr. Etiony Aldarondo.

Rachel: Life catches up with you! Relationships, finances, and life decisions once in deferral re-activate, bringing relief that you can devote time to them, but they require more effort than you anticipated.

Amanda: Ageism is definitely something that has surprised me. I’ve actually had staff try to kick me out of my classroom (during a class, unfortunately) because they assumed I was a student. I was told to expect resistance from students due to my age, but that just hasn’t been the case—overwhelmingly it has come from staff and fellow faculty.

Steven: The aspect of graduation that I have found most
challenging is the transition from a trainee identity to a professional identity. Inherent in the student identity is an expectation of evaluation, deferment of final decisions to a supervisor, committee, or program, and a learning focus rather than a doing focus. Within a professional identity, the evaluative component includes a fluid self-directed evaluation; the idea that one is fit to do the work of psychology independently.

What advice can you pass on?

Amanda Kraha.

Amanda: I’d have to say get away from the “graduate student” mentality as soon as possible. If you start acting like faculty, you will start thinking like them. This transition will make both phone and campus interviews much easier.

Rachel: Network with other ECPs (early career psychologists) and lean upon mentors to learn how to navigate your post-graduate life. Learn strategies for loan repayment and EPPP studying, strive toward work-life balance, and navigate your newfound identify. Use your post-doc year to solidify your professional and personal identity, goals, and desires. Finally, ask questions. Many professionals have taken creative routes to their current positions. They are typically open to using their own experiences to share life lessons and struggles.

Steven Kniffley.

Steven: I have had to come to terms with the idea that I bring to the table a valuable skill set that should be compensated appropriately.

Have a diploma yourself, dear readers? Leave your thoughts and advice in the comments!

Seven steps to self-advocacy

Finding your voice when things aren’t right

It wasn’t too long ago that I faced an ethical dilemma in my practicum, requiring me to quickly learn to speak up for myself and my clients. This was challenging on multiple levels: I knew I should speak up, but could I? What if the situation didn’t turn out in my favor? Would I be marked as a problematic student? Could I continue to work in that environment?

What I’ve found is that there are so many situations that we face as students that require self-advocacy skills—requesting to work with a faculty member, resolving conflicts, asking to get your training needs met, and so on. The earlier we gain experience in advocating for ourselves, the better prepared we will be to advocate for our clients, research participants, students, and colleagues in the future.

It’s true that no matter what job we end up with and where it is, we will face the need to self-advocate. Here, I use my own research, personal experience, and conversations with a long-time faculty member at Iowa, Dr. Elizabeth (Betsy) Altmaier to offer a set of steps to encourage you to be your own strongest advocate.

1. Start small!

When I asked Betsy if she could remember a time or event that was pivotal in finding her voice, she said, “After passing comps, I asked my advisor if I could call him by his first name.” On the surface, it may not seem like an earth-shattering request, but this bit of self-advocacy toward lessening the power differential positively affected their relationship. Betsy suggests starting out small and focusing on first steps, rather than worrying about your end goal. For example, if you’re interested in working with a faculty member on their research but are feeling a bit intimidated, try starting out by asking to meet and get suggestions. Get on their radar first and go from there.

2. There are resources available to you as a student–use them!

One of Betsy’s roles is to get students prepared for the internship match and entry process. She encourages students to get in the practice of locating and accessing resources before heading out. Internship sites often expect trainees to advocate for getting their training needs met. Already having that experience under your belt can make the transition process much smoother. Luckily, as students we have access to peer support, structured resources such as the university ombudsperson, and resources outside of our universities (thanks APAGS!).

3. Don’t let the fear of mistakes get in your way!

Most grad students have experienced the pressure of trying to be great at everything. Self-advocacy can seem particularly risky because it puts us in a vulnerable position. Again, this is where being a student is actually a positive: faculty members expect we’re going to make mistakes and learn from them. If your efforts don’t go perfectly, ask yourself: What did I learn from the experience and how can it inform future self-advocacy efforts?

4. You have skills, people!

Ever worked any kind of job? You practiced systems entry skills then, such as assessing your environment and your competence, locating resources, learning written and unwritten rules, and so forth. If you haven’t worked before, you’ve at least gotten into grad school because you’ve shown initiative, hard work, overachievement, and dedication. Realizing you already have the transferable skills you need can go a long way.

5. Know your audience!

Think like a marketer and know your audience. Tailor your message so that it’s relevant to the person or group you’re speaking to and is framed in a way that your audience can hear. This can help you feel more confident.

6. Know your product!

Similarly, know what it is that you’re trying to communicate inside and out.

7. Create your own support network!

Think about those on your side—fellow students inside or outside of your program, fellow clinicians at your practicum site, fellow lab mates, professional mentors, faculty members. Whether you’re advocating against ethically-questionable practices, or simply trying to work with a researcher you’re intimidated by, having a support network in place will be extremely helpful.

Getting in the practice of using your voice while still a student should benefit you throughout your career and personal life. Best of luck!

[Editor’s note: Wendy Rasmussen is a doctoral candidate in Counseling Psychology at the University of Iowa and an Ensign in the US Navy Reserve.]

5 Lessons from Harry Potter to Deal with an Advisor who is Like Voldemort

Mattu, 2011

So what do you do if your advisor is as evil as Voldemort?

Graduate school is full of enough challenges and hoops to deal with a toxic advisor. But just as Harry Potter was able to overcome Voldemort, you can graduate with your degree, if you think about the allies that Harry developed over the course of the series. These allies all taught him something important, and you can too by discovering people who are like them in your life.

1) Get Hermione on your side – You need a smart peer on your side who can give you feedback on drafts of your proposal, or challenge you with tough questions before your defense. You want someone who can give you truly constructive criticism, without being mean about it.

2) Find Ron – Everyone needs a best friend, with whom you can commiserate after a tough test or a difficult meeting with your advisor. Social support is so important on the journey to earning your degree! Find someone whom you trust.

El-Ghoroury, 2012

3) Seek Dumbledore – As the headmaster of Hogwarts, Dumbledore often went out of his way to protect Harry (even if Harry didn’t know it). It helps to have an ally among the faculty in your department, particularly someone with some power, such as the department chair or the director of training. An ally who is well connected can be a buffer for you in your interactions with your advisor, particularly on committees.

4) Discover Remus Lupin – While Remus Lupin was Harry’s teacher for one year, the most important thing he taught Harry (the “expect patronus” spell) was something he taught outside of class. Find a mentor who is not at your school who can be a source of support as well as instruction. Perhaps you can find a mentor from your undergraduate institution, or from a conference.

5) Reach out to Sirius Black – Although his parents were deceased, Harry had a godfather, Sirius, who played an important role of loving Harry. Reach out to your parents or family for support in grad school, even if all they do is empathize with you and tell you it will get better.

If you can find these types of allies, you will be well on your way to handling a tough advisor.

There is just one last question to consider: Is your advisor Voldemort, or is he really Snape?

El-Ghoroury, 2012

In the books, Harry is convinced that Snape is a bad guy and out to get him, but he learns in the final book that Snape had been protecting him the whole time he was at Hogwarts. Is your advisor really trying to harm you, or are the challenges he’s giving you merely lessons to make you a stronger psychologist?

If these allies don’t help, you may need to learn some spells. Expelliarmus!

Are you ready to rank? Seven tips from now until next week

If you are participating in APPIC’s internship match system, you have likely experienced a demanding few months. You may find yourself wondering if the exhaustion is a sign you did something right, or just the profession’s odd way of saying “thank you” for your hard work.

The good news is that the end of this process is in sight with just a few more hurdles to clear. Next up: Ranking. You have until Wednesday February 5th to submit your ranking lists for Phase I. Finally, something you can control. Feels good, right? Yeah right!

To help you in any way we can, APAGS compiled some tips for you, taken directly from the third edition of our Internship Workbook by Carol Williams-Nickelson, PsyD, Mitch Prinstein, PhD, and Greg Keilin, PhD.

“The most important thing to remember is to simply rank internship programs in the order in which you want them. That is all you need to worry about” (p. 102). Rank the program you prefer most as number one, and so on.
“Do not, under any circumstances, take into account such things as how you believe a site is ranking you, how well you think you have impressed a site, the feedback that you are getting from a site, and so forth” (p. 102). Even if a site violates Match policies and tells you that they’re ranking you their #1, if they are not your #1, don’t list them as such.
The matching program is designed to favor you — to preference your needs and wishes — allowing you to rank sites as you would them, not the other way around. The system will strive to get you the highest ranked site possible from your list, not the other way around. A site will never learn where it stood on your list.
Rank a site even if you’re not sure they will rank you. There is no penalty for doing so. The computer will skip over that site on your list with no reduction in changes of you actually matching. Even if you’ve learned from a site after you’ve submitted your rankings that they will not rank you, the same truism applies. No penalty.
“You should submit [a Rank Order List] if you are absolutely, positively, 100% sure that you are ready to accept the internship to which you are matched” (p. 103). Because the decision is binding, you should think twice about ranking a site that you’d rather stay on campus instead of attending.
The specific order of your rankings will only determine where you match, not whether you match (p. 80). In other words, if you match, it has nothing to do with your list. This also means that if you don’t match with list in ABCD order, you would not have matched with a list in BCDA order either.
Remember when the lights went out on Beyonce’s halftime show at the Superbowl last year? Well, anything’s possible, including loss of electricity and internet. Don’t wait until the last minute! While you can change your mind and rank and recertify until the deadline, give yourself some peace of mind and celebrate knowing you got your choices in!

Best wishes. Breathe. Let us know in the comments what you are doing to take care of yourself this week!

Overwhelmed, but let’s be honest: I did it to myself

Overwhelmed.

What a small word to describe such a large feeling.

Can that one word truly describe the weight I feel right now? Can that word fully portray my stress, my failed attempts to prioritize, my feeling of being so far buried that maybe it’s not even worth attempting to dig out? Can that word express the fear that one more thing, just one more insignificant little thing, will break me?

No.

Yet, it’s the only word I have to describe and classify these feelings.

A day when there isn’t enough caffeine in the world! (Source: “day 300, clutching my morning coffee” by massdistraction, on Flickr. Some rights reserved.)

The good news? Whatever my most overwhelmed moment was up until this point, I clearly made it through. So have you! You may have felt broken, trampled, and/or lost…but you made it. You survived. And, hopefully it made you stronger, more resilient, more ready to take on those feelings that are way to ominous to be embodied by one tiny word.

For those of you who struggle with feeling overwhelmed, who find themselves giving up when those feelings begin to build, let me share with you how I manage it.

Many people ask me how I do it. How I raise a very young family, work part-time, and work towards my doctorate degree. I usually tell them, I just do. But, that’s not the real answer.

I choose to fight the feeling of being overwhelmed in these ways:

I do my best to bar negative feelings from clouding my successes, erasing my hope… Granted, this is not an easy process, but I look at it as choosing to survive rather than worry over my ability to meet every demand.
I take my semester one day, one assignment at a time. I start each day with my girls as a new day. When I feel my patience slipping–which it seems to be doing by 8:30 am these days–I hold whichever one is starting to drive me crazy (if they allow me to) for a full minute, reminding myself that not every moment with her is a mini hell.
I remind myself–force myself, rather–to believe that there is an end in sight. That I am alive, that things can be so much worse, and that those things that are weighing down on me are actually things I am so very grateful for, that I would be lost without, that I could lose if I do not continue to fight and survive.
I take ownership. I am an individual who thrives when overwhelmed, who purposefully adds and adds and adds to my plate until it is at that point. I admit that am overwhelmed because I want so much out of life, and life wants so much out of me. It’s a give and take.

My plan, humble as it may be, is to not only allow life to take what it needs from me, but to give it my all. I have the hope that pushing into it allows me to receive more resilience and strength when it is time for the pendulum to swing back in my direction. And it always swings back.

When were you at your most overwhelmed? How do you manage? Do you see it as an obstacle to overcome or a learning and growing process? Talk about it in the comments.

Read more about raising three kids under three while pursuing a PhD at my blog.

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