Speaker 1: Thank you so much for checking out this video today. My name is Arielle, and I'm the founder of Grad Life Grind. Today, I'm going to be talking about the fall quarter of my third year as a PhD student in clinical psych. If you're new here, Grad Life Grind is a digital platform that I created for current and future graduate students. And I work really hard to make sure that I give you a realistic, no BS look into what PhD life is like. And the purpose of this video is to provide you with a sense of what a semester looks like for a third year psychology graduate student. One thing I will say to preface this video is that as you advance in a doctoral program in psychology, you do less and less coursework and a lot more clinical work and research. So that's going to be the general theme of this video. This is going to look really different than what my life used to look like as a first or second year grad student. And there are videos on my page of what that was like. So we'll start with classes. I only took one class in the fall semester of my third year. And that felt amazing because if you look back at some of the old videos from my first year, I was taking six or seven classes at once and only doing that, not focusing on research or on clinical work. This time around as a third year, one class and a whole lot of other stuff, which I'll get into in a moment. But I took substance abuse and treatment, which was a really interesting course. It felt really nice to just focus on one course and there weren't that many assignments, but I was able to learn a lot. And the class was completely remote because there is still a pandemic going on and my campus has not moved back in person. I think that some of the classes are, but the courses that I've enrolled in are completely remote. I prefer it that way at the moment, but I know that people are dying to go back to in-person classes for different reasons. So I learned a lot from the course. It's not a particular area of interest of mine to work in substance use treatment, but I think it's super important for all psychologists to be informed about, all therapists to be informed about. And because I am gonna be working with severely traumatized populations in my career, I think that knowing about substance use is also really, really important because it can often be something that co-occurs with disorders like PTSD. So like I said before, now that I'm a third year PhD student in my program, I'm doing a lot less taking classes and a lot more other stuff. So I spent a significant amount of time in the fall quarter doing work for a research methods and statistics course that I was the teaching assistant or TA for. And that was really, really cool and a new unique experience for me. I had TA'd in the past, but this course was a lot more instruction heavy and I had a bigger role as a TA than I did in the past. I do have a video about my first TA experience a few semesters ago, but this was definitely different. So in research methods and statistics, which is a doctoral level course for first year students in my program, there's a lot that goes into it. So it's a four unit course, which means that it's about four or five hours and the TA's for that course lead their own lab section. So I had another TA that I was working with who's actually a really close friend of mine and we ran the lab together. So we split up the grading as well and there was a lot of grading for the course. And of course there was lecture. The instructor for the course is also my faculty advisor and my dissertation chair. So I had close relationships with the teaching team and that was really cool. And I got to see my advisor in a different setting as a professor than she is as my research mentor. And we worked together on ways that we might be able to improve the course in the future as we realized that there were some kinks. And we also were really working closely on grading the research proposals, which is the capstone project for that course. Essentially the first year students propose a study that they would wanna conduct and they submit a proposal. And that's kind of the first big assignment that they have in the program. And I loved doing that when I was a first year student and I loved working with my friends on improving their studies. I love talking about research and thinking through research ideas. So a lot of what we did in lab was exactly that. Of course there were other assignments related to statistics and research methodology that we had to grade and that we had to cover in lab. But the best part of it for me was helping students develop their ideas, meeting one-on-one with students to talk about what they were going to propose for their study and helping them think through like, is this study feasible? What assessments are you gonna do? How are you gonna define the things that you wanna measure, the constructs that you wanna study? I love that stuff. So it was a really cool experience for me and I hope that I'll be TAing that course in the future. If I should do a video and talk more about that, let me know in the comments and I will talk way more in depth about research methods. So as a third year student, what has taken up the majority of my time this past fall quarter and now again in the winter is my clinical work. So I am currently placed at a practicum site at a domestic violence agency and I provide therapy for individual survivors of domestic violence. I also run a group in Spanish for domestic violence survivors and I have group and individual supervision to make sure that I am getting the best training possible and providing the best care possible. So I saw about eight to 10 clients in the fall and I started running my group. I started at my site in August and the fall quarter officially started in September. So I was really getting acclimated to the site, getting to know the people in my supervision group who are also trainees and students in other doctoral programs, some of which are in my program as well, getting to know and developing a relationship with my supervisor, figuring out how the site works and what's required of me. So that's where a lot of my time and energy went. I spend 16 to 24 hours a week at my practicum site, whether I'm actually on site or working from home. And that has been a really cool experience that I would love to record another video about if you wanna learn more about what my experience has been like as a practicum student doing clinical training at a domestic violence agency. Let me know in the comments and I will cover that as soon as I can. The next thing that has taken up a bunch more time compared to my first and second years in the program is research, which is really awesome because I was so tired of taking classes already. I'm thankfully gonna be done with coursework at the end of my third year. And then fourth year, I'll just focus on my dissertation and clinical work. And then fifth year is internship. If you would like me to review the overall structure of the program year by year, I don't know if I've done that before, but let me know also in the comments and I will try to break that down as well. But from the research side, I am really excited to report that I've been doing a lot more. So the first year of my program, as I've said in previous videos, I was not required to have any research involvement, but I did volunteer in the lab that I was interested in. And then I officially joined the lab in my second year. And I've obviously been in the same lab ever since. However, I felt that in my second year, I was focusing a lot on figuring out how to navigate classes and clinical work at the same time. And I was involved in research because that's part of the program, but it wasn't a huge focus. And towards the end of my second year, I was feeling like I wasn't doing enough in terms of research because I wasn't like publishing or presenting at conferences that much. So during the summertime, I decided that I was gonna spend the next like six months of 2021 focusing on research and trying to submit to more conferences and just be more productive in that sense. So I spent a lot of the fall doing exactly that. I presented at two conferences and one of them was really cool because it was my first one and it was the National Latinx Psychological Association, NLPA. I was the first author for that. And I can totally do a whole other video about that. Let me know in the comments if you wanna hear more about it. I also presented at a symposium about maternal mental health with my advisor and another student in my lab. That was really cool. And I didn't even know what a symposium was when I started graduate school. So being able to get pulled onto projects like that under my advisor was really exciting. And we presented on some of the COVID related modifications that we made to the studies that we had going on. And that was an amazing experience. And for the rest of the time in the fall, I spent working on my dissertation, which I'll talk about in a moment, and also submitting more conference submissions for things that are upcoming. So I have two conferences that are coming up in the next month or two. And it's really exciting that I used to feel as an undergrad and early in my graduate career that I didn't even have anything to submit. I didn't really have ideas. And I have somehow come up with a lot of different ideas and collaborated with friends and colleagues. And these proposals are getting accepted. So that feels really, really awesome. And it's amazing that I can add things to my CV because as I prepare for internship, as I prepare for future practicum sites, I apply for fellowships and other types of funding. Having conference presentations is really helpful. I've also been starting to work on some manuscripts with my advisor, things that we can submit for publication, and of course my dissertation. So I have a whole dissertation playlist series here on YouTube about this whole process because I want to document the dissertation process as I'm going through it, mainly because no one really tells you how to do your dissertation. And I'm figuring it out as I go and wanting to bring you along on that journey with me. So in the fall, I defined my dissertation study. I secured my dissertation committee, which is awesome. I started to write up my dissertation proposal. I made a timeline for the writing process of my dissertation proposal. And I am still in the writing phase now in the winter quarter, but I'll be preparing to defend my proposal in a couple of months. So I spent a lot of time doing that in this fall quarter. Way less time doing classes and way more time doing clinical work and working on research stuff. So that's a really cool transition about third year that I actually enjoy so much because I'm ready to be done with classes and just focus on things that I feel are gonna really push my career forward, which is experience, direct service, experience with clients, and really delving into the research that I'm interested in. I've said in tons of videos that as a PhD student, I wear so many hats. So the rest of my time in the fall quarter was split between a bunch of smaller roles that I have. One of them is that I am the president of the Latino Student Organization at my program, which is a huge honor. And that just entails having regular meetings with the rest of the board, coming up with events that we can do virtually or off campus or even on campus in a safe way. And that's been really exciting. I've also been, as part of that role, I've also been collaborating with the Latinx Task Force, which is another group of faculty and students at my program that are trying to make progress for the student experience and the faculty experience for Latinos on campus. So those initiatives have been something that I focused on in the fall as well. And it's an ongoing thing. I also have two roles within the admissions department at my program. One of them is on the diversity, equity, and inclusion committee for admission. So we just meet on a regular basis to try and figure out ways to make the admissions process more inclusive and to recruit students from diverse backgrounds in an ethical way, increasing the transparency around what our program offers, all that kind of stuff. So that's also really cool. And aside from that, within the admissions department, I'm also just a regular admissions assistant. So I meet either by phone or on Zoom or even on email with students who are interested in applying to our program. And I just really informally answer their questions and share my experience with them, which is a lot like what I do here on Grad Life Grind. In addition to that, I've also been spending a lot of time figuring out how to make Grad Life Grind better for you. And that has meant recording content, putting things on Instagram, TikTok, all these other platforms. So I hope that you'll take this opportunity to follow me on Instagram if you're not already, follow me on TikTok if you're not already, subscribe to this channel if you're not already doing that, and just stay up to date with the content that I have. I love running Grad Life Grind. It's a huge passion of mine, and it's a great privilege to be able to share all the different things that I'm doing as a grad student with you so that you can either improve your experience if you're already a graduate student, or at least know what you're getting into if you're considering graduate school in the future. That's really the mission behind what I do here. So that has been my recap of my fall quarter. As a third year PhD student in clinical psychology, I covered classes, clients, research, dissertation, admissions jobs, student organizations, conference submissions, and what I do as my passion project, which is Grad Life Grind. It's a ton of work to be a graduate student, but I feel really, really grateful that I'm here. This is what I wanted five years ago. I would have been screaming to know all the cool things that I'm able to do right now, and I love sharing it with you. So if there's anything that I covered today that you have more questions about, let me know in the comments. If there's something that I didn't cover that you wanna hear more about, also feel free to comment at any time. And like I said, if you're not already subscribed, please do that right now, and like this video if you found it helpful. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you for being a supporter of Grad Life Grind, and I hope that you'll check in next time.