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. In this channel, I talk about my life as a PhD student in clinical psychology and bring you information about the mental health field. So if you're a follower of my channel, then you know it's been a while since I uploaded a video and I want you to know that that was definitely intentional because during this time, I wanted people who normally spend time watching my videos to spend their time educating themselves about anti-Black racism and advocating against it. If you're on YouTube or any other social media platform, then you know there's a ton of content right now that's being circulated by Black creators in order to educate non-Black folks about what's going on in this country and what's been going on for a really long time. 2020 has been super heavy since COVID but now even more so with the back-to-back, highly publicized murders of Black people in this country and around the world and I just wanted to make sure that people are focusing on that because that's what is and should be at the foreground of the media right now. And my content is about PhD life and how it's going for me and I think that that can be presented to you guys at any time. And the movement right now, whether it's protests or just information circulating, is something that we all need to be paying attention to and really be a part of actively, not just passively. And in the description of this video, I'm going to include some resources and links for anyone that's watching this made specifically by Black creators of ways you guys can help and educate yourselves about anti-Black racism. And if you want a career in academia or you want a career in the mental health field, then advocacy is a huge part of that, especially for Black, Indigenous, and people of color. At this point, I think that all mental health providers need to be anti-racist and it's no longer enough for anyone to just not be a racist or not be okay with racism. And with that being said, I think that we all need to do the personal inner work as well as the external work in dismantling white supremacy. So the point of this video is not to take away from the importance of any of those issues, but I do want to give a recap now that my first year of the PhD program is over. It feels like forever, but at the same time, it felt so, so short. So I just want to reflect on what that's been like, what it feels like now. And in the future, I'll do some videos about what got me through it as I've done in the past. And I'll also be talking about what's coming next so you guys can stay updated on that. So right now it's technically the summer quarter and I do have summer classes. I'll talk about that in another video, but my first year is over. I'm officially a rising second year. It feels insane to have finished my first year of a five-year PhD program because I felt coming into it that five years is so long and it's going to take forever and it's going to be like this long and arduous process, which I still think that it is, but I'm like, wow, where did the time go? So a year ago, I was thinking about where I would live and like if I would be able to meet people here because I did move out of state for this program. It just feels so surreal and I feel super grateful to have made it and done well up until this point. And I just feel so grateful to have met the people I've met here, whether that's peers or faculty, and I just feel like I made it and I still have so much left to learn. If you're going into psychology, then the learning process is not finite. It's being a lifelong learner, especially if you're like me and you want to get into multicultural approaches to therapy, which at this point, I think that all approaches to therapy and research need to be multicultural, but that is definitely a process that never stops. So what the first year was like for me can't really be described succinctly, but I'm going to do my best. And I think the best way to describe it is by quarter. So like I've said in previous videos in my program, we're on a quarter system, which was really different for me coming from a semester system. But each course, each quarter is 11 weeks, and then you're on to the next. So I took about five classes on average per quarter. And the first quarter, as I said, in my recap for that was all about adjustment, I was figuring out how to be a student in a graduate program in a doctoral program. So a lot of us coming into grad school are used to being really good students are used to being high achieving. And that means something different at every phase of your career. So quarter one was all about figuring out how much time I need to allocate to things, figuring out the caliber of work that expected of me where I'm going to fit in self care, I also had to get used to living in a new place meeting new people. So that was the theme of the first quarter. The second quarter, I think the theme was going from surviving to thriving. So everything that worked really well for me from the first quarter, I carried over to the second. And anything that wasn't working well for me, I tried to make changes. So that meant changes in my schedule changes in how I was planning for things, changes in how much time I was allocating to certain things. So the second quarter is where I really started to feel like a doctoral student. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, I'm doing this. Because I started to take a couple more clinical classes, as opposed to foundational stuff, I started to have I started to kind of be in a groove. And I already knew some people. So it wasn't as scary. And it was a lot more of a confidence building quarter for me. And then at the end of the second quarter, the COVID pandemic hit. So the finals week of my second quarter, and the entirety of my third quarter, which was a spring quarter, was online learning. So even though in the second quarter, I was confident and I was thriving. In the third quarter, the new theme was a new normal. So establishing a new normal for myself, establishing some degree of normalcy for my environment for my inner world, and figuring out how to create boundaries within my home so that I can stay focused. And honestly, it wasn't easy. I was going to do a quarter three recap, but I figured I would just stick it in here, because it was the end of the year. And online learning was tough. I did a video early in the pandemic about tips for online students. And I tried to stick to those. And those helped me a lot. But I think by the end of the spring quarter, I was just exhausted from so much time online, the amount of screen time that was required was insane. And there was a lot of flexibility that my program allowed for. But at the same time, it's not the same thing as having in person classes. So there were moments where I liked it, and there were moments where I hated it. But all in all, the third quarter was figuring out how to navigate how the world is right now. And in the midst of the third quarter, there was the highly publicized deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor, which if you're watching this, they still have not arrested the cops who killed Breonna Taylor. But during all of that, I think that I could feel even though we were doing virtual classes that the world was so, so heavy. And this was towards the end of the quarter. So it's really hard to be focusing on your finals and studying when there's so much more important work to do as a human being. So I wanted to be a student and study and do what I had to do. But I also wanted to be a human being and be out protesting and doing what's really important. So my school did make some accommodations in terms of finals for those students who were under a lot of stress or felt they should be advocating during that time. So I was able to do my part as much as I could. But I think that the third quarter was a whirlwind with COVID and being online, not being able to leave the house a lot of the time. And then everything that was going on in terms of anti-Black racism and watching all of it play out on the media takes a toll. And being a Latinx student, I understand some of the struggles of being a person of color, but there's no way that I could understand what it's like to be Black in this country. And I think that just because we can't know that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do the work to empathize. So like I said at the beginning of this video, I urge you all to do that, whether it's watching films, reading articles, reading books, talking to people, listening to podcasts. There's so many resources out there for us to be doing our part, especially if you want to make a career in psychology. I think that the impact on me of the third quarter was really to refocus my work on what's important in the world. Because I think when we're students, we're so focused on my grades and my papers and my work and things that I want to do and things I want to apply for and people I want to meet and things I want to achieve and conferences I want to go to that we forget that what we are doing is for a greater purpose. So kind of grounding ourselves in what impact do I want to have on the world? And I'm someone who is interested in Latinx mental health. And it's been super apparent in the past few weeks that Black mental health is something that needs a lot of attention as well. So I think that one of the things that has come from this hopefully is that we're realizing we have so much work to do as a country, as a world, as human beings. And overall, I hope that the truth about anti-Black racism in this country and racism in general, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic has caused you to reevaluate your values, your priorities, and how you're going to channel that into the work that you do, whether you want to be a psychologist or whether you're a server. In any work that we do, we can stand for something. And as we're seeing in this pandemic, there is no job that is above or beneath any other. And we can be agents of change no matter what we call ourselves or identify as. And I did a video about privilege in the past. I hope that you would check that out and also analyze how your privilege is showing up in the world today and how you can use it to empower other people. So that's my spiel on that. Looking ahead, what I'm really excited about right now is seeing clients, which I just started doing this week. And I'm going to do a video about that and about my summer classes, but I'm really looking forward to what the next few months and the next four years have in store for me. I really can't believe that I've made it past the first year. I'm really glad that I chose to document the experience on this channel because I'm going to be able to look back on those and see how far I've come. And I'm going to remember forever what it felt like to be a first year graduate student and enter into this space that's really designed to help me grow into the academic, professional, and clinician that I want to be. So I'm really looking forward to what's ahead. And I'm looking forward to bringing you guys along the way with me and letting you know what second year is like and every year after that. So if you watch this video, thank you so much. Again, my name is Arielle. My goal is to inform you, inspire you, spark an interest in you, and hopefully also entertain you. So I hope you'll check back into Grad Life Grind next time.