9 things psychology students are tired of hearing
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Your support makes all the difference.That inevitable response when you get when you utter those fateful words “I’m a psychology student”. Anyone studying psychology will be all too aware that the repetitive and mostly inaccurate replies you get can be enough to cause a psychotic breakdown themselves!...
“So what am I thinking?”
Hands down the most frequent response you get when people find out what you study – somehow studying psychology means you must also be telepathic. You’re all safe; we can’t read your mind.
"Are you psychoanalysing me right now?”
No. Really I’m not. I met you about 30 seconds ago, and I know barely anything about you. We’re not trained to analyse people on first glance, as much fun as that would be.
“Let me tell you all my problems”
Please don’t. I’m not a trained counselor, I can offer you no professional help or guidance to fix every little thing wrong with you’re life. I’m sorry, really I am.
“Friends and family discount for therapy then?”
I managed to fake a laugh the first two or three times I heard this, but it is beyond a joke now (although the majority of my friends and family do most definitely need therapy).
“That’s so girly”
The subject is female-dominated at the moment, yes, but more men are taking the course than ever before. The majority of lecturers are male, and the content is definitely not "feminine".
“So it’s a social science then?”
This scathing remark and its accompanied sneer tends to come from students studying science such as biology, chemistry, or biochemistry. There are still a lot of people who think psychology is not a real subject.
Some vague and probably inaccurate reference they want to make to Freud...
"You love your mother? See, really that just means you want to kill your dad." Freud had some of the most extreme theories in the history of research, and they are largely unrepresentative of what we actually study!
“What do you want to do with that?”
Psychology is renowned for being interdisciplinary and leading to very open career opportunities. Not everyone who studies psychology is going to become a psychologist, and, in fact, a lot of us have no idea what we want to do – no need to put the pressure on!
“What a surprise”
You have to imagine this phrase dripping in sarcasm. In recent years, psychology has been one of the fastest-growing degrees in higher education, with more and more students taking it on each year. It makes total sense that it seems like everybody does psychology!
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