Being a psychology major has its perks, but you’d be lying if you said you can’t relate to at least one of these things. Whether it’s the repetitive comments or questions about your major or the endless readings, you know these psych struggles all too well.
1. SO. MUCH. READING.
In pretty much any psychology class, you’re going to have to read. You may be assigned a few chapters in a textbook or a bunch of online articles, but either way, you’re probably up to your eyeballs in readings every night. Even if what you’re reading about is interesting, there never seems to be enough time in the day to complete all of your assigned readings. You just hope you won’t be quizzed on it the next day in class.
2. When you tell people you’re majoring in psychology, you always get the same responses.
It probably goes something like this:
“You’re a psychology major? Wow! That sounds really interesting.”
Or the classic, “I took a psychology class once in high school. I hated it. I couldn’t do that.”
And of course, there’s always that one guy who says, “what can you even do with that major?”
3. From being a psychology major, you have realized that a lot of people don’t even understand what psychology is.
The clearest evidence of this is that you have been asked to read peoples minds way too many times. You want to say, “???? I’m not a psychic?????” but instead you just chuckle along and pretend that you didn’t just lose brain cells from having that conversation.
4. There are so many psychology majors.
Your classes are typically pretty crowded, making it literally impossible to meet with your professor during office hours because there is legitimately ALWAYS someone who gets there before you. Because psychology classes are always in high demand, signing up for classes is absolute chaos. There has most likely been a time (or twelve) where you didn’t get into a class you wanted because it was already full. Oh, the life of a psych major.
5. You have learned about the same, boring psychologists in the first week of every psych course.
Freud. Erikson. Piaget. Skinner. Pavlov. I know these guys better than I know my best friends.
6. People think everything you learn is “just common sense.”
NO. JUST NO.
7. Your classes have approximately 96 females and 4 males in them. (I’m sorry if you’re one of the four males.)
8. You definitely have that one student in your class who has a story for everything the professor says.
Why is this specifically a problem for psychology students, you ask? Because most of the things we learn about are applicable to our own lives. So every time your professor talks about a psychological phenomenon that LITERALLY ALL HUMANS EXPERIENCE, that one kid in the class has to relate it to his/her own life.
9. You know (or will know) how dreadful SPSS is.
If you don’t know what SPSS is, I’ll spare you the details about this horrid statistics computer program. Just consider yourself lucky that you had to ask, “what’s that?”
10. If you ever want to get a job in the field of psychology, you are pretty much required to get your Master’s degree (or higher.)
This is great news because you obviously haven’t invested enough time, money, and energy into the higher education system already! :-)
11. You spend a million dollars on books every semester because your professor probably wrote the book him/herself.
Or even better is when you can’t get a used book because you need the “new edition” that was JUST PUBLISHED.
12. Every chapter, you find that you either know EVERYTHING about it already, or you know absolutely nothing and it sounds like a foreign language.
Because there are so many different psychology courses, you will probably learn about things in one class that you are learning about in another class (or have already learned about). But don’t be fooled, because the next chapter might sneak up on you and could make absolutely no sense. There’s no in between.
13. You are constantly diagnosing yourself (and others) with mental disorders and illnesses.
You’re constantly psychoanalyzing yourself and literally everybody you come into contact with. And every time you learn about a new mental illness in class, you’re like:
14. You are the person your friends go to with their problems.
And not to toot your own horn, but you’re probably pretty good at helping your friends through their life crises.
15. You realize that no matter how annoying it is, there is nothing else you would rather study.
*Awwwwww*