Liz Bird, current senior (class of ’11), Tacoma, WA
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Hi!
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So, my name is Liz Bird, and I am a graduating senior at UPS. I will graduate in May with my BA in Psychology and a minor in Gender Studies. In a year or so I will apply to PhD programs in Clinical Psychology, but until then, I am trying to figure out what to do with myself! I will be staying in Tacoma for about a semester, living in an apartment with my friend, before I go do research for 8 months to a year before I apply to graduate school. I want to take time between undergrad and graduate school because a) I need a break from school, b) I want to make sure that I want to apply to PhD programs, and c) I feel like I need to develop myself as a “non-student” and get more clinical experience with various populations before I apply.
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I don’t know exactly what I will be doing next semester but here is what I do know/these are my current thoughts:
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June: Vermont with my boyfriend to work at his parents’ B and B and hanging out and maybe have an internship working on health skills with mental health populations.
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July: Home to California to be in my friend’s wedding…bah!…and hanging out with my parents and going to family camp.
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August: Back to Tacoma to start work. If they start hiring Skills Coaches at Comprehensive Mental Health (where I intern now), then I will hopefully get to do that, otherwise I am thinking that I will need to get a nannying job/multiple babysitting jobs/tutoring etc and other work like that because I don’t think that I am going to be able to find a job for that short amount of time. I am currently doing skills coaching at my internship, but I’m just not getting paid for it, and it entails working with foster children in therapeutic foster care (moderate to severe mental health issues and histories of trauma) on skills/doing some mentoring/some therapy-like stuff.
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My first option for research right now is in Vermont at the University of Vermont working with Alessandra Rellini who does research on women’s sexual functioning/dysfunction. I met with her over winter break because I happened to be there visiting my boyfriend and his family, and she offered me a full time volunteering position in her lab. She really offered me more involvement than I think I am going to get from anyone else with only my BA. She has been helping me with my gender studies thesis this semester as I decided to write it on a topic that came out of her research and part of it will be a study proposal that could be done in her lab. I will go and do that in January unless I find something closer to here that is as good of an option…or unless something else changes that I don’t foresee!
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Okay…thats my update! Please feel free to ask me any questions!