Speaker 1: Thanks for checking out this video. My name is Arielle and I am the founder of Grad Life Grind. In today's video I'm going to be talking about the practicum application process that I've undergone two times so far now that I'm in the third year of my PhD program in psychology. Before we get into this topic for today, if you have no idea what a practicum is or what a psychology externship is, then you should check out the other video that I've done explaining all about that. Now, if you do know what a practicum is or a psychology externship, then you're probably wondering, okay, how do I find my externship? How do I get a practicum placement? And that's what I'm going to be going over today. Now, I want to preface this video with usual disclaimer that everything that I'm going to be sharing today is specific to my program and my personal experience. So the way that my program handles the practicum placement process is unique and probably different from other programs. So just know that even though some of what I'll be sharing today is going to apply to you, your program or the program that you're going to go to in the future may be different. So as I've mentioned in other videos that I've done before, in my program, students in their first year are not at any practicum placement. That means they're not seeing any clients for therapy. Even under the supervision of a licensed psychologist, they're just focusing on coursework. However, in our second year, we are all sent to the university's clinic. And not every university has their own clinic, but my program does. And I have a whole other video on what my first year as a practicum student was like and how special it was for me to see clients in Spanish and be supervised by a Spanish-speaking psychologist. All that is in this other video, which I will link to in the description for this video. However, I'm going to be talking about the process today for getting placed at a practicum site in the third and fourth year of my program, where students are sent to an external site. Not seeing clients in the university clinic, but actually somewhere out in the community, whether it is a hospital, a non-profit organization, a community mental health agency, or other types of agencies where mental health services are provided. So how does this process work? So for privacy reasons, I do not share the program that I attend, but it is located in California and my program participates with other schools in the area and other practicum placements in the area to kind of model a system around the APA internship match. So that's the APIC system. And the system that my program uses is pretty similar. So we have a number of participating practicum placement sites that are available to us, and they're all within this geographic location. And we're able to see all the practicum sites in this hub directory website. And we can go through each site and look at what they specialize in, where it's located, what kind of training we're going to get, what kind of students they normally accept, whether they take third-year students or advanced practicum students, which is usually fourth-year PhD students, and we're able to review all of the potential opportunities there. Then we're able to apply to up to 10 sites. I think that in my second year leading into my third year, which is where I'm at now, I applied to about seven sites, and I think this time around I applied to eight. So what's included in the application process is usually a cover letter, one to three letters of recommendation, actually it's usually two to three letters of recommendation, and your CV. And my program was actually pretty great in that we got a lot of hand-holding related to these applications. They helped us have a model for our CV, they helped us with the writing process for the cover letters, and we submit all of those things to the programs that we're interested in. And these are all practicum placements that are part of the overall system that governs the sites in this area. Hopefully that makes sense. So you send these applications forth and then they reach out to you, hopefully, for interviews. Not everyone gets an interview for every single site that they apply to. I know that I got a couple of rejections this year, but in general the next step is interviews. And if you aren't already following me on Instagram, you need to be doing that already. I have recently been sharing all of the questions that I can possibly remember being asked on my practicum interviews. So program directors are interviewing us as applicants and asking us questions about whether we're a good fit for being a student therapist at that site in the coming academic year. And I'm putting everything that I can out there to help you. So again, if you're not already following on Instagram, I don't know what you're doing, I don't know what you're waiting for, you should be on there. That's where I'm most active. I answer all of my DMs, I do a lot of day-in-the-life type of content, and that's probably where this Grad Life Grind community is most strong. So lots to learn about the practicum experience there. So if you're not already following me there, I don't know what you're doing, I don't know what you're waiting for, that's where I'm most active. I answer all of my DMs, and that's where the Grad Life Grind community is the strongest. And I'm sharing everything that I possibly can about this practicum experience, not just the interview process, but also what it's like for me at my current site. And I do have a video here on YouTube that explains what it's been like for me to be at the current practicum site that I'm at. And I'm currently placed at a domestic violence agency, and I provide psychotherapy under the supervision of a licensed psychologist, two survivors of intimate partner violence, and I have a Q&A video here on YouTube so you can hear all about what that is like. But I got this position through this system, through this program matching practicum situation that my school participates with. So after the interviews, the cool part comes, and as applicants we go ahead and rank all of the sites that we've interviewed at in order of our preference. So obviously your top choice goes first, and then you kind of work your way down. You don't have to rank all the sites that you interviewed at, because you may interview and realize, no this is not the place for me, I actually don't even want to get matched there. So you rank, and then the sites also rank applicants. So they're probably looking for a certain type of applicant with a certain type of experience, knowing of course that we're students and we're going there to train. And they go ahead and rank all of the applicants in order of their preference, and then the powers that be, an algorithm, goes and matches us to a site. So the program directors are not actually hand-selecting who they're going to offer a practicum position to, they're actually just ordering us in their order of preference, and then we're doing the same, and then we just get matched. So that is the process that I've undergone two times now. Right now, at the time that I'm recording this, I have not been matched to a new site, and I'll be sharing more about that soon. But this mimics what the APA, American Psychological Association, internship process looks like. So when you apply for internship, which I'm not at this point in my career, and when I am, I'll share more about it, but when you apply to internship, there is the same ranking process, and then there's this national matching process. So you can actually end up anywhere in the country as long as you've applied to those places and interviewed there, etc. And this was sort of a cool way for my program to participate in something that mimics that and helps me and other students prepare for what that experience is going to be like. So it's a little bit nerve-wracking, but I've found that it's actually really fun to interview, to hear about different sites, to meet students from other schools, and of course, once you're placed, you actually do work at those sites, at the site that you're matched at. So that is the overview of how I have been able to get my practicum placements over the past year, two years. And again, I'm just going to repeat that not all programs do it like this. I've heard that at some programs, students actually have to seek out their own practicum placements. So they have to reach out to community mental health agencies in the community, in their area, and find those opportunities on their own. I'm so, so fortunate that that's not the case for my program and that there is this built-in matching system. I'm also super blessed that my program has a university clinic where I was placed in my second year. Again, linking to the video to that as well. So this is how it's been for me. Not all programs do it this way, but hopefully this gives you a little bit of a sense of what might be involved if you are pursuing psychology. Even if you're not in a PhD program, but you're going to study to be a psychotherapist, you probably have to get some kind of hours where you're going to do face-to-face therapy as a training. And you're probably going to work somewhere where mental health services are provided, obviously, and you probably have to apply, interview, write cover letters, and go through this process. So hopefully this gave you a little bit of an inside look as to what that looks like. So many people have absolutely no idea how psychologists and therapists are trained. Most people have no idea that we see clients even though we're not licensed yet. Of course, we're supervised, but I just try to provide information to, like, destigmatize, um, demystify this whole process of how mental health services come to be. And I hope this video was useful to you. Again, if you haven't already, please go follow me on Instagram at gridelifegrid. I'm also on TikTok. You should also be subscribed to this channel because you're here, and if you're watching this video, you're probably interested in psychology, and so there's lots that you can learn from this channel. And also, the last thing that you can do for me is please, please, please make sure that you turn on notifications so that you can be dinged whenever my next video is up, and you can stay up to date with everything that I have coming soon. Thank you so much for watching this video. Thank you for spending time with me today, and I hope that you'll check back in soon. Bye.