ABSTRACT
When people ask me how I decided to become a clinical psychologist, I joke that I simply woke up one day wanting to be one. In the spring of 2007, I was one year out of college, where I had majored in American Studies and Spanish. Through my liberal arts training, I felt simultaneously prepared to do anything … and nothing at all. I was working as a marketing assistant at a downtown Boston law firm, but it had not taken long for me to figure out that corporate life was not right for me. Yet, I was intrigued by the psychology that infused my marketing work. I also reflected on how much I had enjoyed studying different cultures through my undergraduate majors, and how energized I felt in high school while working at a fast-food restaurant and volunteering with adults with intellectual disabilities-positions that heavily involved interacting with diverse people, sometimes seeing them at their very best and at their very worst. Suddenly and subconsciously, I put these experiences together and found myself consumed with a burning desire to become a clinical psychologist. The only problem was that I had not taken a single psychology course in college. I had not conducted psychological research-in fact, I had not even participated in a research study. I had only a working understanding of what clinical psychologists did and what their training looked like. I had no concept yet of what it took to be admitted to a doctoral program. And yet, I could not imagine anything that I wanted more than to be a clinical psychologist. I had my work cut out for me.
