I Almost Chose Psychology

Before you ask about “All Eyes on Me / Part 3”, listen, I will get to part 3, 4 and however many parts to complete my story, but for now, let’s change topics.

This is a story about how I planned on majoring in psychology. 

I’ve always been interested in how the mind works, even today. We think so differently, but similarly at the same time. When I actually have free time, I will most likely be reading books on psychology or learning more about how we think through TedTalks.

Believe it or not, before I developed a passion for mechanical engineering, I was working on a psychology degree.

It started in my sophomore year of high school when I became interested in how our minds work. At the time I was learning a lot about mental illnesses and I found them very intriguing. Career-wise, I wanted to do something that helps people. With a psychology degree, my goal was to become a counselor.

That was what I believed I was going to do for a living. That summer, I researched a lot about both the education and career paths I needed to take to become a counselor. This was my passion. My junior year started as I entered Bellevue College with Psychology 100 being one of the classes I was taking.

“If this was your passion, what happened?”, is what I am assuming you’re wondering. It had NOTHING to do with my experience in my psychology class. That class was amazing and probably one of the best classes I’ve taken at Bellevue College. It wasn’t that I suddenly became uninterested in psychology, like I said, I still read psychology books when I have the time.

To those who love lists, in short, here is what happened:

1. I didn’t have enough patience to get a Ph.D. in Psychology
2. I didn’t need any more math
3. The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t see myself doing it

I am not a patient person and it’s definitely a flaw. As much as I enjoy school and I enjoy learning, I could not picture myself being in school for more than four years. Yes, I understand that you can get a job with a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Psychology, but what I wanted to do required a Ph.D. and it was hard to picture myself being in school for that long.

A good majority of people are usually happy when they find out they don’t need to take math in college, and I was a part of that majority. I don’t give my mom enough credit, but she’s the reason why I didn’t stop taking math. I was so set on psychology and wanted to be done with math, but my mom insisted I take calculus.

Truth is, it wasn’t until calculus where I realized I wanted to take more math. Yes, I am that weirdo that loves math, but that’s exactly what happened. Don’t get me wrong, calculus was a struggle, but I strangely loved it.

Overall, the more I thought about becoming a counselor, the more I realized I didn’t want to become one. Yes, I had and have a passion for helping people, but it wasn’t going to be through therapy. It was going to be through engineering.

That is when I made the switch from psychology to mechanical engineering. Don’t get me wrong, I have so much respect to those who intend and use their psychology degrees to help others. I still enjoy learning about how people think any chance I get and some of my best conversations happened between psychology majors.

And that’s it, this was the story about when I realized I didn’t want to major in psychology, or at least the simplified version of it.

I bet some of you are wondering where is God in this story. Where does He show up? I’ll tell you this. It wasn’t until my senior year of high school where I realized it was a very good thing that I no longer planned on majoring in psychology.

Why? In my opinion, I would have been such a terrible counselor. I didn’t notice it then but it is clear to me now.

Don’t you worry. I will elaborate on that and you’ll see where God shows up in a future blog. To those who know about the Myers-Briggs test, being an ESTJ is the biggest part of why I would have been a terrible counselor.

EXPOSITION. CLIMAX. RESOLUTION.