Grad school or not? Desperately need advice.

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Okay, so I have a degree in psychology from one of the top five psychology universities in the US and since graduating a few years I have struggled to find gainful employment, spending most of my time unemployed with occasional part-time work here and there. Whenever I did get called in for interviews for good jobs, I always got rejected. I think I offended one interviewer by assuming he had attended that university, when he had not. The other instances were surely a lack of good eye contact, stammering, not being able to articulate answers that weren't rehearsed repeatedly beforehand (surprise questions are the worst), and general awkwardness. Well, my degree is from one the allegedly best schools because autism wasn't really covered in any of my courses and I had not even heard of Asperger's until a year after graduation. So that made me disillusioned with academia and psychology in general. Hey, that's pretty damn fail, yes?

Anyway, what I would really like to do is work in music, like at a record label or better yet, help put on shows and festivals*. However, this is highly unrealistic. It's too late for me to get any internships since I am no longer in school and pretty much every internship in California requires one to be a full time student and to prove it. Also, getting into an actual position at relevant companies is highly dependent on nepotism and I have no contacts that can help, or care to.

So giving up on that after having zero luck getting my foot in any doors, I figure it is time to either go back into psychology or find a way to run my own record or comic book store. The latter requires business experience and capital, yes? Have neither. As for psychology, I have a degree, but I graduated a few years ago and had trouble getting to know professors. I did do research for someone for almost two years (did it one quarter for academic credit and he asked me to stay on and help for four more), but I got the impression that he had trouble remembering who I was when I called him last year to give him a heads up that someone wanted a job reference. Anyways, I guess I need help with these:
1. how do I go about tracking down former professors and trolling for recommendation letters? obviously i would have to find a way to get them to know me better, if they even remember me.
2. what would be the best path to pursue? I always found social psych to be the most interesting, but I do not know what to do besides apply to different grad schools with social psych programs. And do I go after a masters or a doctorate? If working in psychology, I want to somehow make the world a better place for aspies, if that makes any sense. So...research? Starting a non-profit dedicated to helping them (would that even require grad school and if so, what?)? I wouldn't be good at therapy.

Noises are a mixed bag with me. Distracting ones that "shouldn't be" drive me nuts, as does attempting to listen to more than one person talk at once. But overwhelming environments like concerts, sporting events, etc are okay and enjoyed since they shut up my mind for a while.

I think that graduate school is a good idea, and it's my humble opinion that you might want to shoot for a PhD. I get the impression that academics is not a problem for you, so you want to play to your strong suit (academics) and underplay your weaknesses (eye contact, interviewing skills, etc). How would you feel about teaching? Or doing post-doctoral research?

To obtain recommendation letters, I would obtain your professors' addresses and WRITE them. In each letter, explain your relationship with that particular professor (took a class, did research for them, etc.) to try and jog their memory as to who you are. I'm sure that you're aware that you are at a disadvantage doing this sort of thing years after graduation, so you want to do whatever you can to remind them who you are -- including maybe going in for a visit to help the professor remember who you are. Also, when you write these letters, you may want to explain what your emphasis will be when you attend graduate school. If it's possibly something that a particular professor also specializes in, he may be more inclined to give you that recommendation letter.

I think that leaning towards autism research, or something along those lines, would be a good thing. One area that seems to be wide open is research into adults, and/or the transition from adolescence to adulthood. You may want to spend some time figuring out what area of autism or asperger's research is lacking attention, and concentrate on that.

Start practicing, studying, and figuring out how to excel at the GRE. If you manage to get a stellar score on that, then a lack of recommendation letters or problems in an interview just might be not a big deal.

Sadly, Psychology is one of those majors where you need at least a Master's degree to go anywhere.

As someone in academia myself, I recommend getting a ph.d. You will contribute a lot more to society through research than through other things you suggest, so don't you want to be proud of yourself?

Now even if the above doesn't convince you, I still recommend getting ph.d. Even if you decided not to do a psychology later on, you haven't lost anything by getting a degree. But if you don't get ph.d. and later regret it that you didn't, you would never change the fact that you will have to get ph.d. in your 30-s, if at all, since you can't become younger. Other things you suggest that are non-academic don't have a clear finish line that you want to cross by a certain age, so you can always put them off.

I have experience in the music business, the best advice is to stay away.
Also while most MAJOR label jobs are in California, most jobs in the music business are outside of it. Honestly, Chicago is probably the biggest city for music in general. Also it is a changing industry, that will likely be much smaller than it is now, and much more focused on indipendant ventures. Not a bad thing, if anything its a positive. But its also difficult territory to navigate.

I was a sound engineer, toured, and did booking at a few places. I should note, I don't work in the music business. Poopylungstuffing may be good to talk to because she runs a venue. I wouldn't view the music industry as dominated by nepotism, but the truth is certian levels do require practical experience. I should note, I was doing sound engineering at 19 for local venues.

I will say helping to put on shows and festivals is something you can just jump into. But you have to start local. Its something not alot of people want to do because it is exhausting. The thing I will tell you, it doesn't pay much. If you want to go this route it takes alot of work. Also don't judge it in terms of "I can't break in" because of this, that, or any other reason. Truth be told there is probably some non-profit venue that is always looking for help and volunteers. I don't know, if you want help, ask me. I am not as active as I once was but the world of indie and local music has not changed much.

Always its a good idea to pursue a masters or doctorate. I went into music to support myself while i was in college and after law school. To make a little extra money on the side. If you really want to do it, think about opening a venue...thats what poopylungstuffing did.

Well, I have experience in phd grad school and wouldn't recommend it if you are not crazy about the research. While many people enter for noble reasons, curing cancer or such, after a while one is too busy to just keep afloat. MS is reasonable if you just plan to get a job and probably the safest option (you can always continue to phd if you like it).

1. Don't worry if profs do not remember you right away. They do have lots of people but they know they need to provide reference letters.

2. Check out research topics and interests of faculty and see who overlaps your interests than apply to that school.

good luck

It depends on the research, though. Honestly, a lot of the research people do don't have a clear, practical contribution to society, so contributing to society through research is not necessarily true. It's good to be able to be proud of one's own contribution to society, but getting a PhD and doing research isn't the only way to do it.

Also, trying to get degrees done as early as possible isn't really a strong incentive to going into graduate school earlier than later. There's little point in going to grad school if you're not committed to the work, as AnotherOne mentioned. You need a lot of self-motivation to stick it out through all those years of work, and you're better off taking time away from grad school now to figure out whether you have that motivation, than to jump into grad school only to find out 3 years down the road that your heart isn't really into it, and quitting. You can see getting a PhD as a kind of "race" with a discrete finishing line, but you can also see most other life learning and accomplishments in the same way, e.g. getting a job, learning about relationships. I personally took 4 years off between undergrad and graduate school to figure out what I wanted to do with my career, and I have no regrets at all about that decision. I'll be 31 when I finally finish up here, and that's not a career killer by any means. At any rate, life is full of decision-making: sure, if I go to graduate school earlier, I can finish it earlier, but that means that I am sacrificing my ability to do something else during my 20s because grad school takes up so much time. So while you can argue that we aren't getting any younger, it's always going to be that case no matter what you do. There's no reason to think that getting a PhD is something that has to be done by a certain age, and it's not necessarily beneficial to get a PhD at 25 with no life experience under your belt, compared to 35 with a broad range of experience, let alone more of it.

I think I have misspoken when I said "contribution to society". My own research, which is a theoretical physics, does not contribute anything to society in YOUR sense of the word either. But I still make that argument in the favor of my research, because even though it has no PRACTICAL contribution, the papers that I write last forever. If someone is into music, then they write some songs and these songs get out of fashion. But if I am into science and do somethign really good, it will never get out of fashion. Well, sure, we all know that Newton was wrong because Einstein is right, but Newton is still famous, isn't he.



Motivation is a CHOICE, and everyone can push temselves through few years of graduate school. Well, sure, that would not be a pleasant experience. But these few years that they sacrifice will be worth it since then the rest of the life they will say they have a degree.



You can have many jobs, and many relationships all of which come and go. But once you have a degree, you have it for good. You might decide to never work in that field again, but you still have your degree!



Why is it bad to have a degree without any experience? The degree itself does not put you under any obligations, only job does. So, if anything, it is not good to rush and get a job without any experience. But getting a degree will be a nice experience FOR a job you will get some point in the future.

You are right about how contributions to science work, but I can provide an alternative example about music. Indeed, individual songs' popularity is transient, but let's say, for example, that the OP isn't going into the music business to put out new songs. The OP expressed interest in putting together shows and festivals. If those shows and festivals are done for a philanthropic, charitable interest that helps out a lot of people in their lives, the OP can really make a huge contribution to society. With the help the OP can provide, some of these people may finally be enabled to go on to do other things, even to go into science and do research! People make their contributions in their own way.


The decision of "is a few years of suffering worth having a degree in the end?" is a personal one that each prospective graduate student must make. Not everyone is going to answer that question affirmatively. Depending on the person, sometimes it just isn't worth it, due to other circumstances in his or her life.


But even after you leave the job, you will forever and ever have the experience and have gained real world wisdom from having worked in that job. The same goes for being in relationships that eventually end; you'll have gained social skills and wisdom about how relationships actually work. Very importantly, you'll have a better understanding of your own limitations. Education, learning and growing do not come only from formal education systems. Work/life experience is hands-on education too.


Because things in real life do not always work out the way you'd think by reading a book about it. It's the fundamental divide in life inside vs. outside the ivory tower. It's evident when some AS folks think they can truly understand the ramifications of human socialization without participating in it. For example, I work in genetics, so while I can read a ton of publications in my field, I wouldn't have any real hands-on knowledge of how any of the research is carried out, unless I saw it firsthand and did it myself. I wouldn't have an understanding of exactly how involved a particular experiment is unless I did it and learned how resource-intensive it could be. This is really important for proposing feasible experiments for grant writing, for example.

It doesn't make sense to say "it is not good to rush and get a job without any experience", because a job is how you get experience. That reasoning is rather circular. If you want to make the statement analogous to the "it is not good to rush into graduate school without real world experience", you could say "it is not good to rush and get a job without formal education"... which wouldn't necessarily be without merit.

Is getting a degree nice for getting a job? Typically, yes!
Is having work experience nice for getting into graduate school? Typically, yes!

The thing is, formal education and work experience can't truly replace each other. You can rush into formal education, but you won't truly understand the meaning of it until you actually go out into real life and practice it. Similarly, there's only so much you can get from work experience without formal education to teach you some of the more sophisticated topics. The two work best when used together. We all start off in formal education as children, but most people gradually add in work experience to augment their education, their own growth and development. I don't know if there is really a "work experience" component in theoretical physics, so your field might be an exception to the rule, but for the vast majority of folks, they'd need both education and experience to be most effective in their fields.

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To the OP: It's always best to get recommendation letters from people who know you very well. A fairly lackluster or unenthusiastic letter from a professor who did not know you well is not going to help you too much... but of course it's better than nothing at all. You mentioned the professor for whom you worked for two years, and while he ought to be a good reference, I wonder if he always has a really crappy memory, or if it's a sign that you didn't really stand out so much in his eyes? Is there any other way to get work experience related to your field at all, even if you'll end up having to emphasize "transferable skills"? Having such work experience would help you get additional, more recent contacts you could use for recommendations, as well as help demonstrate your dedication to the field in your grad school applications. Ah, if you think you'll be going for research, you'll be much better served by looking for PhD programs instead of terminal Master's programs, as others mentioned.

Do some googling on grad school, and if it is worth the hassle or not. It may not be what you need to get where you want to go, and might be sending you in the wrong direction. There are other ways to supplement your BA besides grad/professional schooling. It all depends on your interests and abilities. BTW, I have a BA in political science and no way in hell am I going to grad school.

If you want to work in psychology, it's very difficult to do with a BA. The BA does not generally provide enough training in theory or clinical practice to be useful in a counseling setting, and you definitely don't get enough research/methodological experience to do too much in a lab.

I used to be an academic advisor, so I'm happy to talk a little about you specifically if you want to PM me all the sordid details (GPA, GRE, research interests, etc); Jaydog and I spoke at length when he asked a similar question, but I scared him off, I think.

You really need to love research, unless you're going in to a program with an explicit clinical (e.g. counseling) focus. You need to have some idea of a specific area within your broader sub discipline to research, even at the master's level. Grad school is not for everyone, it can be grueling, and it doesn't guarantee you a job at the end.

You might also want to think about a master's in Social Work with a clinical focus if counseling is your thing. Better job prospects than with an MA/MS in psych, usually.

This. Having a master's in psych isn't going to get you many job prospects. I'd go for clinical psychology, but that's a long, hard, expensive road. What I would do is actually talk to some people who have recently finished the programs that you're considering.

That said, I don't know a lot about getting a job in psychology but I DO know about the music business in California. I got an internship at an indie label in San Francisco which later became a paying job. However, it was a part-time job with no benefits that paid minimum wage and had no opportunity for advancement.

I also have a certificate in "the music business and recording". I told my classmates I wanted to run my own label, and they were all, "you can't do that!" What none of us realized was that of course I can do that-- if I never expect to make a profit. The music business is all about networking-- but not just in a job sense. Most people start out by helping musicians for free. You don't need an internship to do that, but you need to be able to find people with some talent who will want your help. So sure, you can get involved in music, but for most people who are involved, it's not profitable enough to be their sole job.

This is getting long--I could talk for awhile about the music business, so feel free to PM me if you want to hear any more.

Thanks for the posts, everyone.

What area of psychology would be the best to focus on in order to do research into adults and the transition from adolescence to adulthood (i.e. experimental, social, behavioral, developmental, etc)?

things that go bump in the night

You might look in to a branch of developmental psychology or child psychology. Maybe something in aging and lifespan. What are your particular research interests in the area?

Look at it from an investment point of view... If you get paid $5K more a year having a masters degree how long would it take to pay it off? Plus you have to factor that you would not producing income for an additional 18 to 24 months. Its usually not very good. Government and corporate management are the only areas I can think they benefit and half the time they'll pay you to get you masters. My opinion... Not a good investment. What are you are doing studying psychology? Don't psychologist need good people skills for success?