Ah, the life of a Grad Student. Since my last post (ages ago) I have begun the long-haul to get my PhD in Clinical Psychology. Yikes. There aren’t all that many education and career paths that make people shy away like the title “clinical psychologist” does. Basically, I’m hoping my next few 5+ years of education will help me to know myself and and know how to help others, and you know…all of that research, teaching, career preparation stuff too. Seriously though, clinical psychology has been my dream for years and I am absolutely loving my program and the people in it thus far. Dream come true.
Besides going to classes and (soon) starting clinical work, I spend quite a bit of my time plugging away at research. During undergrad I did a qualitative/quantitative study on gender harassment and sexual harassment in Christian academia (you better believe it happens!). My Master’s Thesis is looking at benevolent sexism in Christian academia. From there the variables, outcome measures, and hypotheses become convoluted but just know that it has something to do with complementarianism/egalitarianism and extrinsic vs. intrinsic religiosity. Didn’t I just say that people are shying away from me? Clearly this line of research is helping a lot. Despite my lack of popularity, I feel that this research really needs to be done. Sexism as a whole has received quite a bit of research attention in mainstream culture but the studies of sexism in Christian circles are quite limited. This is too bad because sexism within Christian sub-culture is rampant and, to make matters worse, is often justified through scripture. Think on that one for a little bit…
Looks like I have my work cut out for me.
happyfeminist 