Getting an education

I had a teacher once, Ph.D. in psychology, who told me that the undergraduate program in psychology didn't effectively prepare students for graduate work and future careers in the field. They are constantly changing the undergraduate program to make that statement less true. At the time, he believed that the English program did more to prepare psychology students for future study (granted psychology students would still need to take a few core courses).

I can see his point. English majors read a lot of books. Books about people. Then what do they do? They write papers about the books about people. They analyze them. They try and guess their motives, understand the significance of a character's actions, find the symbolism that must lurk in all things. (I used to believe that symbolism wasn't in everything. I have since corrected that belief to: symbolism isn't purposefully in everything, but good writing will have symbols throughout. They tie the prose together).

It's a great training ground for future clinicians. You don't even have to worry about confidentiality clauses. English majors as clinicians.

It made me ponder the other day, and I realized that maybe my career training (two degrees in psychology) has better prepared me to write fiction than it has to be a psychologist. I have studied how people learn, how people are motivated, how they think. I've learned about humans as social animals, humans with disorders, humans as individuals. Psychology, the study of what makes a human human.

It could mean that I can write better characters, whose actions and inactions are more realistic. I can write about what people will do in situations, because I understand the psychology of what people do in various situations.

At the same time...do I really need a degree to be able to do that? I've lived for almost three decades among humans, only 1/5th of that getting my degrees. It seems that sheer experience more than anything would qualify me to be able to write about the idiosyncrasies of man.

Who knows...but it is something consider: If you want to be a writer, study psychology.