A day in the life of a Psychologist 

If you want to be a psychologist, you have to be prepared and really understand what this career is about. It's a career who demands you a lot during your educational path and also with your emotions. This article inform you about what is the reality of psychologist and what you will have to complete and go through before doing your actual career. 

A psychologist works on the mind of people. 30% of all psychologist work for health facilities and 40% of them also work as counselors, educators or researchers. Often, those types of psychologist also do at the same time private practice. They have a flexible schedule but it demands them a lot of time. The objective of the majority of psychologist of is to do private practice. They are their own boss and can accommodate to the schedule of the patient. There are also corporate psychologist who work for the government ; they work alone in a more fix and structured schedule. They enjoy from time to time a conference because it take them away from all the reports they have to do. Even if sometimes it's hard for a psychologist on their emotions and with their schedule they love to do their jobs because they feel a satisfaction in helping people. They feel honored that people open up to them.

If you really want to do psychologist, you have to be aware that you will stay in school for many years. With your doctorate of Philosophy in Psychology (Ph.D.) you will be able to do a lot of things but it's approximately five to seven years to obtain it. You will have to do a final dissertation based on other research. Before this dissertation, you will have to complete a lot of different course that will prepare you to become a psychologist such as quantitative methods, statistics and you will have to work with computers. If you want to do private practice, you will have the chance to practice with patients with a supervisor during one year before your graduation and another year of supervise private practice a year after you get your degree to make sure you are ready. You also have to see a psychologist because it's a part of the training. With the newer form, the doctorate of Psychology (Psy.D.), it's more based on your clinical experience instead of the dissertation. The Ph.D. and the Psy.D. takes the a comparable amount of time to do. People who do a Psy.D. are more concentrate on the counseling and the Ph.D. also do research. Obviously, those who have a Psy.D. have less options with their career paths. Psychologists have to obtain their certified license from the state by doing exams and tests such as pass essay and oral exams. Those tests are useful to know if the person if truly qualified to be a psychologist. If you study psychology but you don't want to do a doctorate, you will always be supervised by a doctoral-level psychologist in you work. You can do a master degree to work as an assistant, to direct people in their research and in their psychological evaluations and do private practice with only certain patients. This degree is two years of school and one year of internship. If you want to do a master in Psychology, you will have the choice between doing some practical experience or do a thesis based on other research. If you only do a bachelor degree, you have less options. You can work as an assistant to other psychologist and work for other mental health professionals. It's less favorable to do a bachelor in Psychology even if you graduate from the University. You can also study biology, physics, social sciences or other subjects related to Psychology.