Speaker 1: Thanks for checking out this video. Today I'm going to be talking about why I decided to choose a PhD and not a master's in psychology. And if you're not already following me on Instagram at gradlifegrind then you're missing out because the people who are following me voted on my IG stories for this week's topic. If you want to have a say in what topics I cover on this YouTube channel then go to Instagram, follow gradlifegrind, and then keep an eye on my stories so you can vote too. After this quick intro I'm going to be sharing why I decided to choose a PhD instead of a master's. Welcome to gradlifegrind. 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 some people know that in order to be a psychotherapist you only need to obtain a master's. In most states you can become a licensed mental health counselor or a licensed psychotherapist, a licensed marriage and family therapist. There are different titles but in general with a master's program you can get licensed and work as a therapist. So I've definitely been asked why would you get a PhD? Why would you put yourself through five to seven years of schooling when you can see clients for therapy with just a master's? Well the answer to that question is it was in alignment with my career goals to get a PhD in clinical psychology. So a little background to this story is that when I was 12 years old I decided that I wanted to be a psychologist. I do not remember this. This is a story that my mom tells me and at the time I wanted to be a child psychotherapist. Now I don't really want to work with children but I knew what I wanted to do from a really early age. So by the time I got to high school I already knew that I was going to major in psychology and by the time I got to college I knew that I wanted to get a PhD and because of that I was able to basically craft my experience in education with the intention of becoming a good applicant for PhD programs. And yes I could have totally been a psychotherapist with just my master's. Plenty of people do it and they have awesome practices, make great money, and live their best life. But once I decided to learn more about psychology and the different types of jobs that I could have I actually wanted to venture outside of psychotherapy. So if I just wanted to pursue my 12 year old dream of being a therapist maybe a master's would have been fine. But I actually want to do research, get involved in teaching, potentially have a clinical supervisory role, or be an administrator, or a clinical director. So having a PhD gives me more opportunities, more career options, and that was important to me because I'm really passionate about representation in academia. So I identify as Latinx and I'm also Spanish speaking and less than six percent of psychologists are Spanish speaking and even less psychologists are actually from a Latinx background. So it's really important to me that there's more Latinx people represented in this field and I didn't want to limit myself to only seeing clients for therapy for a few reasons. Number one, I feel that if I'm passionate about representation that I want to be able to show up in lots of different areas in this field. So I want to be able to teach. I want to be able to do research with Latinx people. I want to see clients who are from a Latinx background. I also want to be a mentor or a supervisor for students like me who are coming from a Latinx background. And even though I can see clients with a master's I wanted to do so much more than just that. So career options and representation are two of the important reasons why I decided to go for a PhD. The other is that working in psychology is a helping profession. What that means is that you're helping people all day long and especially being a therapist you are absorbing a lot of the things that your clients tell you about and that can be really difficult and I wanted to give myself the option of having other hats that I could wear if the psychotherapy was becoming a lot for me. So in order to kind of decrease my possibilities of burning out I wanted to make sure that I could have multiple roles so that I'm not just seeing clients 40 hours a week nine to five. I wanted to be able to maybe see clients two days a week and then teach another two days of the week and then mentor on the other day of the week and have a little bit more variability. And this is a very very personal decision. I like to do a lot of different things because I don't like to do the same thing over and over. So this is completely unrelated to what you should do and it's totally individual to what I am doing and why I made this decision. I wanted the option of showing up as a Latinx psychologist, research, teaching, etc. I also wanted to give myself the opportunity to have multiple roles and impact the field in multiple ways and I also didn't want to get overwhelmed or tired of doing the same thing. Now people with a master's can also teach and I had a number of professors in college that were master's level. So I'm not saying that getting a PhD is the only way that you can do the things that I want to do. It was just the right choice for me. So a lot of times people are wondering should I get a master's, should I get a PhD, should I get a PsyD, which is a doctor of psychology and I did a video about that recently. People are wondering what degree is right for me in the field of psychology. It depends and if you're studying psychology you'll learn that the answer to a lot of questions is it depends because at least the question of what degree you should do is really individual to you and your life and what you want in the future. So the way to make a decision about what degree is right for you is number one, where do you see yourself in the future? What kind of job do you want to have? What kind of role do you see yourself having? The other is what experience do you have in order to be a competitive applicant for that degree program? So maybe a master's is right for you if you don't feel like you would be competitive for a PhD. That's totally fine. Another factor to consider when making a decision about what degree to pursue is also cost and time and your lifestyle. So if you have kids getting a PhD is a huge commitment and if you aren't able to dedicate yourself to a full-time program and you need to work then maybe a master's is an option. There's so many factors that determine what degree you should get including what your life is like now and then how you want your life to be in the future. So I hope that this video provides you with some insight as to why I made the choice that I made but I hope it also helped you figure out what degree is right for you. I think in a separate video I can go through what degrees are available to you because there's master's in clinical psychology, there's master's in social work, there's master's in counseling psychology, there's a master's in marriage and family therapy, there's so many different options and there's also so many different types of PhD programs, counseling, clinical, social psych. So if you want me to cover that let me know in the comments and I will try my best to get you the most accurate information about that but I hope that this video was helpful to you in some way. I hope that you'll connect with me on Instagram like I said at the beginning of this video. 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