kthorshov

Due to a plethora of personal reasons after an admittedly long 6 year BA I decided that I needed a break. After years of promising myself I would never do such a thing, I didn't even feel bad about it. I was beyond exhausted. So the first year I felt more than entitled to, the second year kind of snuck up on me and my reasoning was that if I spent the whole year preparing for grad school thats not really a year off right? By the third year off I felt like crap and by the fourth I was almost numb. While I agree with dogoodfeelgood, there is a limit and people with the best intentions can get sidetracked before they know it. If you decide to take time off, have a timeframe, know WHY you are taking time off, and set concrete goals on what you want to accomplish in this timeframe. Really its all stuff we tell people do in therapy right ? In terms of your specific situation a gap year (or maybe even two?) could be good for you. Luckily you have some solid ideas about where you might want to go and most of them aren't hard to explore. One of the easiest things to explore is your interest in children. No matter what you decide to do with them there is going to be a massive amount of socializing with them and just DEALING with them as kids. You can get this experience pretty easily through working in a day care (the certification usually isn't hard or long) or even in your church or other community center. If you can deal with them 40 horus a week and say "wow this is really awesome" then you're a good candidate, If its any less than that I would stay clear of the field. There are also ways you can explore the teaching aspect but it might be more insightful to teach a lower level student (for example at a tutoring school, or if you really want to go all out its pretty easy to get a teaching certification as well, It also helps put money in the bank for later). Teaching in say hs will probably be more reflective of the work you would do as a prof in terms of preparing lectures, planning projects, grading term papers, then a TA who spends most of their time just grading papers in the background. I might also keep in mind that while it changes from school to school I remember reading somewhere that most professors only spend about 20% of their time teaching, so ultimately its a smaller part of your job and you may be able to file it under "parts of every job you don't love, but tolerate". I would just make sure that you explore how profs otherwise spend their time, their lifestyle and if thats something you would enjoy. As far as the I/O side, I don't know anything about that - sorry.

A little more than a year ago I was introduced to a friend who worked as a QMHP, a position that until then, I didn't even know existed. Being a server at the time, not only would it mean training in the field I love but a significant pay raise. After applying to all of the county's in the area over the next year I had a few close calls but was ultimately rejected; except for the last one where they were very interested and were on the verge of hiring me until the position closed due to funding issues. About 3 months ago I get a job at the family business and I'm finally getting settled. My pay is more than I would have made as a server or QMHP and by living at home I should be able to save about 20k in the next year. A few days ago a receive a call saying that the position was open again and would like to meet for one final interview in which they basically hand me the position. However the office is a little more than an hour away so I would have to move closer (and pay rent) there is also a modest pay cut which would diminish if not extinguish my ability to save a significant amount of money. Additionally the job is full time and the more pages I go through on this forum, the more I wonder if I would be better served by looking at a position in a lab, or maybe its possible to hold a full time job and volunteer at a lab as well? (anyone have advice or experience with this?). I would like to persue a Phd in counseling psychology so both aspects are important, I just don't know which if either is more important. Any advice anyone has on any aspect of this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, going about it that way crossed my mind but I was sure if it would be time effective, good to see that it works.

Ive always been told that there is a lot of crossover between the two and the only difference is that clinical tends to lean towards more debilitating disorders while counseling deals with problems seen in the common population. However as I'm going through the insiders guidebook of clinical/counseling programs - Im not seeing a whole lot in terms of counseling schools that I would be interested in and I guess I'm curious about how to break into looking at clinical programs that may be skewed more towards the general population. Do these even exist? and how would I go about finding them?