Back To School

Okay, so last night I was totally dreading today. I really didn't know how I'd feel about my class(es), the program, or if I was going to like the people I was going to meet. I didn't end up going to bed until about 1:30am, even though I had an 8:00am class just because I didn't want to capitulate. I don't really know what I was thinking, but I just know that I didn't feel like going today. Mostly, I just had no idea what was in store for me.

So class started and as was the case with the last program I was in, most of the first year grad students have the same classes before everyone starts specializing. I guess that's true of any graduate program. My professor for the first class also happened to be the department chair so she opened up some class time to talk about the graduate psychology program in general, as well as let us ask her a bunch of questions about whatever it was that we had on our minds. I just loved how straightforward she was about everything, and BYU is really emphasizing getting students out in 4 years, and making sure everyone starts moving on their thesis work.

The class part won't be hard at all, but the thesis/dissertation work will be a huge pain. I guess that's my bar equivalent for law school. And it sounds pretty intimidating. This semester I have to come up with a research proposal for what I will study for basically the next two years, and then pick a committee of 5 faculty members, and do a defense for why this is a good research topic. Then I have to put together a research project, gather results, and then write it up. Just my prospectus (proposal) alone is going to be about 40 pages. Awesome! Good thing I love writing! Unfortunately, that kind of writing is totally different.

My professor had trained originally to be a nurse, and then years later she went back for her PhD in psychology emphasizing in neuroscience. I think one of the most interesting questions that you can ever ask someone is 'why?'. I don't know how to punctuate that better. It turns out that she had a son, who, as a child had the garage door close on his head and he suffered some brain damage due to a lack of oxygen to the brain. Apparently now he's a fully functioning adult with his own family, but that caused her to seek answers and she was a driven enough person to pursue that interest to a really intense level. She's a really cool lady.

I met another girl that is in my specific emphasis and she was telling me that she was interested in learning more about sexual addictions and the like. I wanted to ask her the why question, but then felt like their might be a possibility that the answer might border on deeply personal. Sad how that can happen.

I love BYU. My department seems very determined to turn out quality graduate students, and from what the professor had mentioned, the school also has a proven track record of helping students get to wherever it is that they want to go if that's academia or the private sector. There are so many really dynamic people here, and I really enjoyed having the whole morning to meet other people, to relate with them on shared concerns that we have, and just to have another opportunity to get back on a career path that I'm really interested in. It's awesome. I'm so grateful for the opportunity.

It's only one day down of at least four more years, but I'm feeling pretty good so far. I've been able to meet a lot of cool people today alone. I even joined the graduate student committee, but who knows what that really means. We'll see I guess.