Speaker 1: Thank you for checking out this video. I'm going to be providing you today with a sample answer to a really popular question that is asked in doctoral interviews. I'm going to be answering the question, where do you see yourself in 10 years? And I'm going to be answering that through the lens of somebody who applied to PhD programs in clinical psychology. If you're applying to a different field, then you can still learn something from this video, but you will have to make some adjustments. By the end of this video, you should know generally how to approach this question and be able to start coming up with some sample answers of your own in preparation for your interviews. 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 PhD student in clinical psychology. And in this channel, I bring you information about the mental health field and talk about my journey as a PhD student. So ultimately the question, where do you see yourself in 10 years is really asking, what are your goals? Where are you going? And why are you even pursuing graduate study as part of your future endeavors? And I think that if you're applying to doctoral programs, then you know generally where you want to end up, but you may not be 100% sure. For example, with a PhD in clinical psychology, you can do a lot of different things. You can become a therapist or psychologist. You can do research. You can have an academic position. You can supervise students. As a clinical supervisor, you can be a program director. There's so many options. And you don't have to box yourself in necessarily, but if you have a general idea, I think that this is a question where you kind of want to nail down maybe two things that you want to focus on. In the next 10 years, you don't want to say as a response to this question that you want to do everything. Well, I want to get a PhD in clinical psychology so that I can have options so that I can do whatever I want. I think you want to showcase with this question or with your answer to this question that you have a general idea of where you're going and how you're getting there. And that grad school is a part of that. So this is your opportunity to show that you know what you want and you're on your way to getting it. So here's my sample answer. 10 years from now, I see myself being a licensed clinical psychologist. And with that degree, I hope to have the privilege to be a full-time professor for a number of reasons. I think primarily because representation is something that is extremely important to me. I know firsthand the value of having mentorship from people that look like you. So as a professor, I would be able to teach but also mentor one-to-one other students who may be looking for someone like me. So as a Latina professor, I feel that I can provide so much value that is really really needed in this field. As a professor, I also hope to run a lab and have my own research program where I can of course continue to provide mentorship for students and also make a contribution to the field and to science within my interest of domestic violence within the Latinx community. So this isn't a perfect answer. There is probably no such thing as a perfect answer and I'm definitely not an interview expert. But I feel that it's important to hone in on what you're really really interested in doing in the future for this question because the evaluator, the interviewer, is going to be thinking like, do we offer what this person needs in order to reach their goals? They aren't going to admit you if they can't give you what you're looking for too, right? So I chose to approach this question by saying I want to be a professor because I want to provide representation, I want to teach, I want to mentor, and I want to do research. I know that these things are possible with a PhD and I know that research is a huge component of clinical psychology. So you want to hone in on the careers that are possible with the degree that you're pursuing. I'm sure that by now you've already decided what your career goal is and grad school is a part of that, not the other way around. So think about this when you're trying to figure out how you might approach this question. Where do you want to go? Why do you want to go there? And make sure that you weave that into your answer and make sure that you are giving enough information for the person who's listening to see whether the program is a good fit. They're going to ask you whether you feel like you're a good fit and why you feel like you're a good fit, so that's coming up in another video. But throughout the interview with all the questions you answer, you want to kind of throw in little things that are going to show that you're a good fit without really saying it. I hope this video was helpful for you and I wish you the best of luck on your interviews. I hope that you will like, subscribe, follow me on Instagram and on TikTok at gradlifegrind, and I also hope that you'll check out my other videos too.