Dos Años

So, a lot can happen in 2 short years. In my own experience, the changes have been challenging, yet remarkable and exponential in depth. Two years ago, I received my 3rd degree, an Ed.S. in School Psychology, from The Citadel Graduate School. I had finished my thesis and Masters degree in Psychology one year before and was full steam ahead in my early career.

Since then, I have had amazing opportunities abound in my life. My wife and I had been engaged for over a year this time two years ago and we married on 7/7/7 in beautiful and charming Charleston, South Carolina. A little over 2 weeks after we exchanged our vows, we moved to Philadelphia for me to pursue my doctorate in Psychology. I had been accepted to the medical school shortly after interviewing and attending a national conference in NYC that March.

After settling into Philadelphia, I set out to work full-time as a school psychologist. Putting my degrees and experience to work was my ultimate goal while I worked on my doctorate primarily at night, very early mornings, and on weekends and days off. The whole process, in retrospect, was a bear. A giant bear, in fact! But, I didn’t know to what degree it would occupy me while I was in it. I was selected to teach on the Masters, Specialist, and Doctoral  levels while an early “2nd” year student. This was what flung me into the mode and frenzy of taking in less than 2-3 hours of sleep at night. But, it was all worth it.

The doctoral degree to this day has afforded me over 60 more graduate hours on top of my previous 78 from my first graduate programs. I now feel pleasantly prepared mentally and academically  for my work as a doctoral psychologist and am gearing up for my final capstone full year clinical psychology internship in August of 2009. I will finish my residency at the child and adolescent psychiatric hospital, clinic, and school one year later in August of 2010. In the meantime, I am working diligently on my dissertation.

Opportunities have shown themselves to me over the past 24 months. I’ve gladly taken on most of them in hopes of gaining some form of knowledge or experience. I’ve also passed on publications and work that may not suit my goals, but that is all part of the madness of becoming a doctor. To me, it’s far more important to find your niche, your passion, and your area so to speak, than to work in a general sense, perhaps, not knowing which area of psychology you like. I’m fortunate to know what it is about the field that I love.

So, as the future so quickly becomes the present, I am looking forward to the next several years of my career. I’m looking forward to more exciting opportunities to publish, collaborate, and specialize. I plan on contributing more to journals/books in the form of reviews, articles, critiques, and chapters. But, most importantly, I plan on establishing a strong basis of empirical data with my research in Frontal Subcortical and Executive Function involvement with Emotionally Distrubance. I’m considering post-doctoral work in neuropsychology, which right now, seems so distant, but it’s only a year away. I look forward to the process and hope that the next two years are as fruitful as the last.