I was rather depressed recently. Ever since the last interview 3 weeks ago, there wasn't any news at all from anyone. In fact, every morning I wake up and didn't even know what (or who) I was waiting for.

As the days passed, I started questioning the value of a psychology degree. Psychology-related jobs can be broadly classified into the 3 major fields - educational/developmental, clinical practice, IO in Singapore. There are other sub-fields that I will not list here.

Educational refers to those related school settings, such as student counselling, EP, allied educators, ABA therapists etc. Clinical are those involved in dealing with mental disorders, counselling or research. IO managed issues in the workplace, such as personality testing, recruitment, organizational change etc.

Despite the large area presented here, there are several problems. To start it off, a bachelor's degree does not give us sufficient qualification to engage in clinical practice/specialist positions. Except for special circumstances, most organizations will prefer to hire those with a Master's degree or some professional certification.

A second issue is that the bachelor's degree is a generalized B.Soc.Sci degree (together with sociology, geography, CNM etc). Unlike some other universities overseas that offers specialized degrees like B.Sc in Organizational Psychology, this degree only covers the basics of each field as characterized in a liberal arts course. Hence when comparing with a HR degree, it becomes less attractive (or that is the most common question I was asked when I applied for those positions).

Not many can see the benefits a training in psychology. The most important thing we learn is the writing skills and approach to information processing. A bulk of our time in spent honing our skills to consolidate different sources of knowledge into a coherent piece of work, which other degrees (eg. engineering) played less attention to.

Another strength lies in the emphasis on research methodology. We spent a lot of time designing questionnaires, experiments to tests our hypotheses and findings. We are trained in statistical analyses as well.

Psychology is essentially a study on human behaviors and we have the ample knowledge on the theory (why some people are more likely to be leaders than others) as well as the inter-personal experience (working with group members in projects to investigate group dynamics).

Ultimately I did not regret choosing psychology as a major. But when reality strikes, I am kinda affected nevertheless. It's either there is a problem with me, my degree, or employers still prefer the traditional business degrees. Otherwise I must be a damn unlucky fellow.

I need some miracles. I need a call.