Speaker 1: Welcome to Grad Life Grind. If you're new to this channel, thank you for checking it out, and if you're already a subscriber, thanks for being back again. My name is Arielle, and I'm a Ph.D. student in clinical psychology, and in this channel, I bring you information about the mental health field and talk about my journey as a Ph.D. student. Thanks for checking out this video today. It's been a really long time since I recorded. So much has been going on in grad school life and in my personal life. But today, I want to talk about what a typical week looks like in a Ph.D. student's life. As you know, I'm a Ph.D. student in clinical psychology, and that means a very specific thing compared to other programs. So I have a lot of different roles, I wear a lot of different hats, and I'm just going to go over what this quarter's schedule looks like for me. I am on a quarter system, not a semester system, so the quarters are 11 weeks, and that means that things go really fast, and a lot is always happening. So among the many roles that I have, my role as a student involves me taking currently two classes, which is pretty low. I think some of my other peers are taking three, but I decided to make a conscious decision to take one less class and focus a bit more on research this quarter, and I'm really excited about that. So I'm taking two classes, those are assessment of personality and supervision and consultation. So I'll get into what those mean in a second, but being a student, taking classes, is really only a fraction of what I do as a grad student. There's research, there's my role as a TA, there's my role as a student employee, and there's also grad life grind, my personal life, and so many other things that I do for myself as self care. So usually each quarter feels like a different theme for me, and I think that the theme for this quarter has been balancing. And instead of getting comfortable with the idea that everything needs to be perfectly balanced, I've been getting comfortable with the idea that balance is going to look different for me every single day, depending on what I have going on and what my priority is, and that has brought me a lot of peace. So to explain a little bit more about my classes, assessment of personality is exactly what it sounds like. We're learning how to do personality testing, how to interpret the data, what personality tests mean, how we can use them in a clinical setting, meaning in therapy, and how we can explain what the results look like to a layperson or a regular person, one of our clients, as opposed to making it really complex and jargony. We're also learning report writing, and it's been interesting. I didn't really think that I would be interested in it, but so far it's actually kind of cool. We do some personality assessments on ourselves, and then we interpret the data about ourselves, so that's been a nice surprise, and it's making it a little bit more engaging. I think we all like to learn more about ourselves, especially being in this field. It's something that I find interesting. I think knowing myself is part of the work that I do as a therapist. So that's what that class looks like. So supervision and consultation is the other class that I'm taking, and it's been pretty cool so far. One of the roles that clinical psychologists can have in their professional lives is as a clinical supervisor. So if you've been watching my videos or keeping up with my content for a while, then you know that I see clients for therapy as a trainee under the supervision of a licensed psychologist. And so my supervisor has a very specific role. I work under their license, and so they advise me on the clients that I see. They facilitate my development as a clinician. So bringing it back to the student side, we have to take a class on what good supervision looks like, how to be a supervisor in the future, and that's part of our overall training. So in that class, we talk about our supervision experiences. We read and discuss material related to supervision. There's research in this area, and we can learn what not to do and what to do as a good supervisor. And that's something that I'm interested in doing in the future, which I didn't know I was interested in until I started grad school. So that's been a cool class, and both of these classes seem pretty chill this quarter. I don't feel super overwhelmed by the material or by exams or anything like that, but I do have some overwhelm coming from just how many different roles I have. So I spend two days a week in classes, one day in supervision and consultation, and one day in assessment of personality. They're in the morning. I think they're about three hours each, and they meet once a week. And then I have to block in time throughout the week to do the reading, to do the writing, and the assignments for those classes. So that's part of what I do, and then I spend probably 10 to 15 hours a week in my role as a student therapist. And what that looks like is seeing clients for therapy. My caseload is between four and six clients, and I see some of them once a week, some of them more. Some are individuals, some are couples, and I also have to make time to attend supervision. So that is once a week, an hour of individual supervision, just me and my supervisor, and then two hours a week of group supervision, so my supervisor and all their other supervisees. We share cases, we talk about conceptualizing our clients and helping them to the best of our ability, and really thinking about our development as clinicians. In addition to that, in my role as a clinician, I also have to do a lot of writing. We have to document what we do in therapy, and all that documentation takes time. So that's all contributing to my role as a student therapist. And then there's also preparation for sessions, my own education, whether it's attending forums or workshops related to therapy, or reading about either research or reading treatment manuals that can help me in my work with my clients. So that's a whole other thing. This quarter, I'm also spending a lot of time on research, and that was intentional. So I am in a lab that focuses on maternal mental health and integrating digital tools and technology into helping pregnant and postpartum women in preventing postpartum depression. And my research interest is in domestic violence among Latina women, and so I weave that into the lab's projects. And I'm also trying to develop some of my own projects. So I meet with my lab once a week, but I also block time in my schedule just by myself to sit down and work on these research projects, whether it be contacting participants, reviewing the data, reading the literature, brainstorming the projects that I want to do, submitting abstracts for conferences that I may want to present at, or applying for research grants, stuff like that. So it's really unstructured, and that's been a challenge for me, but I'm finding ways to create structure for myself. And some of the ways I've been doing that is meeting with other people on Zoom, and we work together at the same time, setting up meetings with my advisor so she can help me flesh out my ideas. And I'm really excited, and hopefully there will be some cool things coming out of the time and dedication that I'm putting into research this quarter. And it may look different for other grad students in different types of programs, but research in my program is pretty unstructured. So we only meet once a week as a lab, and the rest of the time is really up to me. So how productive I am in terms of research, how much I publish, how much I present, kind of falls on me. And so that's why I've decided to really focus on making time for it this quarter. And it's been challenging but fun, and it's yielding some cool projects and collaborations and partnerships with colleagues and stuff. So hopefully more to report about that soon. The other hat that I wear is as a TA. It's my first time TAing this quarter, and it's for Social and Personality Psychology. It is a doctoral-level course, and it was one of my favorite courses in my first year. And so that has been another thing that I have to balance. I spend probably five hours a week preparing for that, whether it be grading, reading the material that students are assigned so that I can be engaged in the discussion, actually attending class and being part of the discussion with the professor, going back and forth via email or in meetings with the professor to make sure that we're doing the best job that we can. And that's been really, really fun. It's kind of a treat for me to attend this class again as sort of an instructor. And while I am not teaching the class, I will be doing a guest lecture, and I kind of chime in where I can ask questions to the students and really facilitate their thinking and discussion. And it's really, really cool. I wanted to start teaching so much earlier in my graduate career, but that didn't work out for various reasons. And I think that was for the best. And now I have the time and the headspace to really give a lot of effort to it. And I think that I'm optimistic about teaching more in the future. If you want to hear more about what that is like, what it's like being a TA, what it's been like for me, drop a comment below and I will cover that in a separate video. And the other role that I have is as a student employee. So I do federal work-study and I work in admissions in my program. And I have two roles within admissions. One is as an admissions assistant. And I just talk to students who are interested in the program. I answer their questions and I try to be as honest as possible about what it's like being at this program so that people can make an informed decision about whether they want to apply. And that doesn't take too much of my time, but it's something that I enjoy doing. The other role that I have within admissions is on a committee for diversity, equity and inclusion in the admissions process. And we work on projects that are going to make the admissions process more equitable. And that's something that's really important to me. And I have to balance that, whether it's meeting with a team or doing my own independent work. Balancing that with all the other things that I have going on. And the nice thing about it is that it is a job. I do get paid for it. But it's another thing that I have to squeeze into my schedule and just make time for. So those are all the grad school things that I have going on this quarter. Not to mention Grad Life Grind. I love producing content for you. And I hope to be more diligent about recording videos in the next few weeks. And I spend probably 10 to 15 hours a week on Grad Life Grind. And so if you're doing the math as I'm explaining all this, my work life is probably upwards of 60 hours a week. And if you're thinking about pursuing a doctoral program, that's something to keep in mind. Between classes, clinical work, research, working, my personal life, my passion project, which is Grad Life Grind. There's really so much to balance. And I think that on social media I come across as handling it really well. And some days that's true. But other days it's really, really challenging. And I try to share this as honestly with you all as possible so that you can get the inside scoop about what it's like. I wish that I had that when I was thinking about applying to graduate school. So that's the goal behind this video. I hope it was helpful. And if you found it useful, please like this video, leave a comment. Let me know what you want to hear more about. If you have any questions, I'm always available to you via DM on Instagram. Also on TikTok. And I hope to hear from you soon.