The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Distance learning Psychology Masters

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi there, it's Marianne here. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to quickly let you know about something exciting that's happening right now. If you've ever wondered how to create income that works for you, rather than constantly trading your time for money, then you'll love the Race to Recurring Revenue Challenge with my business mentor, Lisa Johnson. This challenge is designed to help you build sustainable income streams. And whether you're an aspiring psychologist, a mental health professional, or in a completely different field,

Starting point is 00:00:32 the principles can work for you. There are also wonderful prizes to be won directly by Lisa herself. And if you join the challenge by my link, you can be in with a chance of winning a one-to-one hours coaching with me, Dr. Marianne Trent. Do you want to know more? Of course you do. Head to my link tree, Dr. Marianne Trent, or check out my social media channels, or send me a quick DM and I'll get you all the details. Right, let's get on with today's episode. Coming up on today's episode, we are thinking about masters, distance learning masters, part-time to be specific. There's so much to gain and I am joined by a student who

Starting point is 00:01:16 is completing his qualification as well. Hope you will find it so useful. Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast. I am Dr. Marianne Trent and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. Really lovely to have you here. Thank you to those of you who are regular listeners and a big welcome to you if you are a brand new listener or watcher. If you are watching this on YouTube, please do take a moment to subscribe to the channel, like some content and fling around some lovely comments too. That would be marvellous. If you are listening as an MP3, please do consider liking, rating and reviewing on Spotify and Apple. That would be so appreciated. So when I was an aspiring

Starting point is 00:02:06 psychologist, I took the decision to do a master's. And at the time, it was quite radical to do it kind of mainly distance learning. And I know that is more common. People often ask me, well, should I do a master's? What sort of master's should I do? And so today we're looking at that. And I hope you'll find the episode really interesting and it might give you some ideas and some options to how to pick the right sort of masters to blend around your life so that you can thrive, not just survive as an aspiring psychologist or mental health professional. Hope you find it useful and I'll look forward to catching up with you on the other side. So Gavin, it's lovely to have you here. Thank you for reaching out to me. I know that

Starting point is 00:02:49 you heard me talk on the British Psychological Society keynote. So that's how I think I came to your attention. Thank you for reaching out. Thank you for joining me. It was my pleasure. I listened to you on that keynote and you just came across really engaging, really kind of inspiring. That always piques my interest. I like people that come across in that way. So I started checking you out and, yeah, as you say, I reached out and here we are. Here we are indeed.

Starting point is 00:03:19 And I was intrigued by you because I don't think we have chatted to super loads of men on this podcast. So it's always nice to get a masculine narrative. But also you shared with me a number of kind of difficult factors that make your journey in psychology that bit trickier. Before we go through some of those could you tell us what your current state of play is in terms of career and where you might want to get to? Yeah so I currently work for a large organization it's my kind of day job I'm a compliance manager which is effectively looking at what the kind of frontline people do, what people do with customers, and whether that's being done in the right way and whether we're getting the right sort of outcomes for customers. I have a few kind of speciality areas within that in that I can look at a specific population of customers in particular, which is the customers that are defined. I don't really like this definition, but vulnerable customers, which is a kind of regulatory definition, which basically means customers that need a bit more help.

Starting point is 00:04:30 So I'm quite passionate in that area anyway. Kind of links into my own experiences as well. And I also do a couple of podcasts now, actually. So I will plug them. One is the Safe Place podcast, which is my main one. And then another one was a brand new one that we're just starting out, which is called Disabling Me, which is a kind of ironic take on life as a person with disabilities.

Starting point is 00:04:54 Also gives you a little bit of flavour of what I might have experienced as well, which I know we'll touch on. Great. And you're also. And obviously my kind of career trajectory is now thinking about what i want to do next and what i want to do for the rest of my career so i'm slightly older in age which you might be able to tell by some of the gray hair um so i i'm kind of nearing 40 i've had a couple of career changes uh in my my career to date one that i should have made a lot earlier was was this move to towards psychology um it feels the most appropriate for me um in in multiple ways but particularly it feels most

Starting point is 00:05:34 appropriate for the kind of good natured element of of kind of who I I feel I am and and who I want to be as well so that's kind of what drives me to to move forward with that too. Great thank you and you're studying for an MSc in psychology at the moment as well is that right? I am yeah so I've actually got an essay in in a couple of weeks time so it's very stressful at the moment as I'm sure many will remember in my second year I'm doing it part-time online through the University of Derby so yeah lots going on and then just thrown into the mix we've had our second child recently who is about eight weeks old currently so yeah lots lots going on lots of lots of exciting things. Well congratulations and I hope um your second child is thriving and fitting into family life um as well as can be expected um and how many years is your part-time

Starting point is 00:06:34 msc you expecting to finish at the end of this year so the end of next year uh that i should finish it so this year is the kind of end of the bulk of teaching modules and then I'll have a year doing the research elements of it interested to kind of see how that's going to work and then obviously it's on to then applying for Declan is what I'm looking at applying for so okay we'll have all that to look forward to. Can I ask a slightly nosy question because I know that our audience might be wondering as well in terms of tuition fees for part-time masters do they literally just sort of take the nine thousand split it across three years or does it not work quite like that? So it depends as with all these things so you can either pay it up front and you get a bit of a discount if you do if. Most people aren't in that position.

Starting point is 00:07:27 I would say that's mainly either if you're just very fortunate in that you've got a spare 10 grand sitting around. Let's be honest, that's pretty rare these days. Or potentially getting sponsored by your employer, they might pay for it. But again, unless you're already of already in that broader field, probably not going to happen. Or then there's the kind of population that I'm in where I'm self-funding. I actually use a kind of mixture of earnings

Starting point is 00:07:57 because I'm in a fortunate position in that way, mixed with a bit of support from the student loan company. And it's paid out. I pay it monthly, actually. So I pay a kind of split across the, what will be three years. And you just pay 200 and something pounds a month that I pay.

Starting point is 00:08:19 And then the kind of student loan comes in quarters. But there's lots of different ways of paying it. I find personally the most easy for me to budget and the most easy for me to kind of keep going with and and just know what's what what's kind of going out um is that that monthly that monthly bit partly because if it's three monthly I'm liable to forget and then suddenly have this big bill to go out so I choose to do it monthly. Thank you so much for that context and it sounds like you're actually able to be quite flexible in terms of what works

Starting point is 00:08:49 for you so you get a salary so actually monthly usually works better for you. Exactly yeah and I think that's that it's an important thing to to kind of make sure people really understand because any form of of kind of postgraduate study often seems really unaccessible but there are lots of ways now so yeah it's actually better than my um my first kind of postgraduate study so i studied law uh gosh about 10 years ago makes me feel very old um but yeah i studied law about 10 years ago and that was postgraduate study all self-funded and there wasn't really the kind of student loan support back then in the way that there is now so it's not ideal it's never ideal to self-fund but there are many more options now to um to kind of get through different different forms of study postgraduate and in my view it's it's

Starting point is 00:09:46 worthwhile doing thank you so i would be imagining that you're doing what's called a conversion masters which needs to be accredited by the british psychological society is that right gavin it is yeah yeah could you tell us a bit about that? So if someone's like, I don't know any of the words that Marianne just said, could you tell us what that is and why that's important? Psychological society, obviously, is the kind of body that sits around psychologists to make sure that people are doing the right jobs in the right way with the right qualifications. There's lots of other stuff that they do as well. But, you know, let's focus on that element.

Starting point is 00:10:31 And to make your way through the the process to become a psychologist in whichever way that you're that you're kind of going to do it you need to get through accredited courses so the bps um accredit certain courses that meet certain criteria um in universities uh university of derby where i am is one of those that's online accredited. There's not that many that are online accredited. So it is a bit of a kind of slim pickings out there. But fortunately, Derby's very good anyway for psychology. So I'm kind of fortunate in that. And then you can also do it obviously face-to-face depending on your personal situation.

Starting point is 00:11:11 That then allows you, once you've completed that, to get what's called graduate basis within the BPS, which then allows you to go on to your kind of next stage of applying for whichever route you choose to apply for. So it could be another master's, it could be a health psychology master's as an example. You could be looking at educational psychology, clinical psychology being the one that I think most people are probably aware of and looking at. But you need to go through that process. Otherwise, you'd have gone through it doing your undergraduate degree, which again would need to be a BPS kind of accredited course and it gives you a similar sort of status through and that gets you to that graduate it's just that it's at a master's level because I've already studied in my case I've already studied a couple of different degrees and stuff in the past so yeah it's just a slightly different route into getting ultimately to the same position as doing an undergrad. Great thank you so much for clarifying that for our listeners because um i know that as

Starting point is 00:12:06 you say the accreditation for the undergrad is really important to be able to get that graduate basis but actually the masters there's not you don't have if you if you've already got your graduate basis undergrad you don't technically have to do an accredited bps masters it's kind of it might be nice to have but it's not an essential but if you don't have the undergrad gbr already you do need to do the conversion masters yeah and it's it's similar in a few different professions so law has a similar thing in that you have to go through a conversion course if your undergraduate wasn't in law it's the same thing in psychology it's making sure that everybody has got that base level of skills to go on to the next stage

Starting point is 00:12:51 and it's in that kind of controlled function of being an accreditation kind of process so it makes a lot of sense it does mean that you've got a lot more academia to go through than some other routes in life. But again, it makes relative sense for that to be the case in psychology. And, you know, law and accountancy even has got a similar sort of thing. So there's lots of lots of different routes that you have to take. Great. And if someone's thinking, oh oh I might quite fancy a part-time distance learning masters I wonder what that involves what does it look like day-to-day week-to-week month-to-month Gavin so I'm quite lucky um and so that was a slight wry smile for

Starting point is 00:13:42 those of you that aren't watching um because in many ways I'm kind of not so lucky. But in this context, I'm quite lucky, really, because I have flexibility in my job, which means that I work a condensed week. So I work four days in my kind of day job. Then I have Fridays, which is predominantly focused on me doing my study. Sounds really simple. It's never quite that simple. So you need roughly 20 hours a week to be able to kind of get through the course content, all the other reading, you know, to start thinking about essays and the like.

Starting point is 00:14:19 So that's if you're doing it part time in the same way that I'm doing it. You can also do an accelerated course, which is basically twice the amount. You do two modules, which means that you need 40 hours a week. So if you think about it, that is pretty much working a full time job there or thereabouts for most people just on your study so one of the things that i would always express to everybody is that before you go into any form of additional study whilst you're working even part-time i mean i i remember in my in my kind of law studies i worked part-time in hmv and thought that'll be easy it's gonna be absolutely fine it was an absolute slog um i was working in in in retail stores loving it because it was hmv and i love music and i love film and all that sort of stuff

Starting point is 00:15:11 and i was enjoying my legal studies as well because the academic side is really interesting um but it's a lot of work to kind of go through so you really need to think about before you kind of go up go out there and go right i'm going to do a master's first of all think masters is quite an undertaking no matter how you're doing it it's a lot of study it's a lot of thoughts a lot of making sure that you've got a structured environment to work through and that you're able to give your best um kind of best chance of of kind of succeeding well um in that master's and then you just got to think about your time so have you realistically got 20 hours a week that you can not just kind of sit down whilst you're watching tv and and kind of study but actually really sit down and properly study you've got to digest the information you've got to have some way of

Starting point is 00:16:05 trying to get that memory recall going on um otherwise it's great to read it once but it's probably not going to go in so it's a lot of work um but it's incredibly interesting um i've learned loads about myself in doing it so my my last module was pain psychology it's probably worth just saying at this point so one of the things that that i can live with is a condition called complex regional pain syndrome which is a relatively rare pain syndrome it's kind of known as i mean there's lots of different names for it to put it to context one of those is the suicide disease because there's a high prevalence uh this is kind of a global thing a high prevalence of suicide because it's just so extremely painful

Starting point is 00:16:57 there's a really good documentary uh on netflix that is uh taking care of maya that gives you a good kind of context of what it is like to live with the condition a bit more about it but also some of the kind of medical stuff that that goes on so i had the opportunity then to actually study what it was that was going on from a psychological standpoint and a certain amount of kind of medical stuff as well because pain psychology you've got to understand a little bit about it um on the other side designed a website that that that was um that was all about crps and that was the the kind of assessment so slightly different assessment style um i just learned lots about the condition that i live with the nature of pain the sorts of things that i could possibly do to to kind of help myself

Starting point is 00:17:43 and and kind of help work through. And just pure coincidence, I was also going through a pain management clinic, which is basically where you've got a health psychologist, physiotherapist, sort of a kind of anesthesiologist in the background, and then usually a kind of pain specialist nurse that are helping you to understand pain understand how to live with it and and to kind of manage your own your own symptoms so in that period I had all those things going on at once now that's a lot it was yeah there was a lot to go through there was a lot of things to think about and all and and to just just deal with but it gave me more insight than i would have ever otherwise have gotten so for me even if i was to have done nothing else with the masters for me that would have been

Starting point is 00:18:36 so fulfilling um that actually it was worth it um anyway for me so i'm gonna now looking at the rest of the masters it's all just a bonus for me which is a fortunate position to be in despite the kind of not so fortunate condition to live with. Yeah and I guess there's something around us being the wounded healers isn't there and actually we learn so much about ourselves and then also how to help others from the stuff that we're being taught and then learning how to apply and work through with others totally and and it's i i think there's a really it's a real place for lived experience in in psychology so and and what i kind of mean by that is that understanding it from a kind of textbook

Starting point is 00:19:26 perspective is is is brilliant and obviously it helps hundreds and thousands of people um across the across the kind of uk certainly probably more than that um i should know the stats really but i don't um yeah it there's there's there's kind to help that way but then you've got another level where you can bring your own experiences to things and i think we see this across the board in that when people go from having no children to having children you you have a different mindset about what that experience is so you may have been thinking oh it can't be that bad to to have a very little sleep for eight weeks it can't be that bad to to have a very little sleep for eight weeks it can't be that bad to having to think about father christmas as an example and what that means and what that

Starting point is 00:20:11 does but then you then you come across it and then you start to realize that actually these things are in their own right so little challenges to overcome and then you as soon as you've been through that you have that extra dimension of i, kind of enhanced compassion is I think how I would think about it. And that you have that extra experience to give to other people that can just aid your conversations and understanding of what that person might be going through. With the acknowledgement that actually everybody is individual everybody's experiences are their own and you always have to keep that in your mind but it does give that sense of relatability and that sense of understanding and it kind of gives you a hurdle up which is a slightly ironic thing as a wheelchair user getting a hurdle up because we can't do steps um but it gives you that that that extra

Starting point is 00:21:08 dimension to kind of talk to and ultimately for me to help people um and that that's where um i think i'll bear to add good value to to people's experiences yeah i absolutely agree and i think the longer and longer we're fortunate enough to carry on walking or wheeling around on this earth the more and more we learn and the more hopefully authentic it makes us and our ability to kind of interact and engage with people and I think certainly when I was younger it felt like I was sort of putting on my psychology jacket and you know being able to then use those skills in a certain way with people. But actually, the longer my career has gone on, you know, my professional self and normal self are very much more blurred. And it's, you know, I am just I'm just myself, really.

Starting point is 00:21:58 And I'm the main intervention. But sometimes I'll use something kind of theory based. And it's not all about me. It's definitely not. But, you know, it's always for me. I'm a person first and a psychologist second. Yeah. Yeah. Gavin, thank you so much for your time in helping us understand a bit more about the process of distance learning and masters and why we might want to do that. Before we finish, could you tell us a little bit about your advice for not burning out as an aspiring psychologist? So I've been asked this question before and I often ponder over it. I think ultimately it comes down to making sure that you have a degree of organization but also ultimately

Starting point is 00:22:47 being kind to yourself so when you're feeling like you're overwhelmed like there's too much to do that everything is just not where it needs to be and all these things that we all do experience going through any form of learning and frankly within our own careers and and and just our general lives it's just going to take a take a step stop and just take a breath and understand where you are um what you're doing is already fantastic you're already taking on um some wonderful um opportunities to learn and to grow and that actually that in itself is an incredible thing um to be able to say that that you are that you are doing and ultimately you are achieving it so yeah be be kind to yourself um and give yourself that that kind of moment or even a day

Starting point is 00:23:42 two days three days just take a breath, take a break and kind of get back to it in a refreshed and kind of more considered and mindful way. So Gavin, you are a podcaster. Do you want to tell us a little bit briefly before we finish about your podcast? Yeah, definitely. So the main one is the Safe Place podcast. That's been around for a couple of years now in, in kind of strictly podcast form. So I'm quite traditional on that one in that it is purely a listening podcast.

Starting point is 00:24:11 I think there was one episode where I might've done it on, on video and they got scared of looking at myself. But yeah, it's, it's out there on, on Apple podcast. It was even in the top mental health podcast for, for a run just before Christmas last year, which was really quite cool. And it's a person that's just had lived experience of living with anxiety or depression or other mental illness. We've got people with BPD on there. We've got people that have been through experiences of living with cancer. We've got

Starting point is 00:24:59 people on there who are psychologists in their own right um and and are kind of there to to help share some of their experiences and give a give us another way of looking at at these things um it's a really interesting show it's done live um and it's it's done in a way that we hope is inviting to you to to kind of come in and and feel the the warmth of the show and hopefully learn something new too. And then the second one is one called Disabling Me, which is a brand new podcast. I'm a co-host on it. And the whole idea around that one, it's a social commentary show on living with disabilities. We're going to have guest hosts on there. So we're all having the kind of traditional guest it's everybody coming on to have a conversation about different topics different experiences and just having a kind of warm friendly environment of those conversations that

Starting point is 00:25:57 we just don't hear as often as as we would we would like to so we thought why not let's let's do our own version of it and let's get those stories out there. Brilliant. It sounds like such important work that you're doing. And of course, when I say work, we don't get paid for this. You know, we do.

Starting point is 00:26:14 It's a lot of work. You know, when we first connected, we were like, these podcasts are hungry beasts, but it feels like really important work to be doing. I will make sure that I'll link to both of your podcasts in our show notes and in the emails that go out. If anyone wants to join my mailing list, please come on over to goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk. Scroll to the bottom of that first page or any page and I think you can join my mailing list from there. Gavin, thank you so much for your time. Where's the best place for people to find you on socials so you've got two main options you've got linkedin which is i am gavin clark and that's clark with an

Starting point is 00:26:51 e um and you can find me on there i've got a beautiful photo of me on my wedding day uh with a kind of pink background and a three-piece suit with a lovely blue dickie bow so look out for that and be mesmerized by how cheesy my grin was on that day. You can also find me on LinkedIn, where I tend to share slightly more kind of professional stuff, I guess, but always with the mindset of our lived experiences and some of the kind of things that are going on at the moment in the in the wider world so if you want to kind of hear about some some thoughts on those and some of the

Starting point is 00:27:30 things that we can do that's also a really good place to to follow me and to engage come and have a conversation I like to chat. Thank you so much for speaking to me for two episodes of the podcast it's been an absolute pleasure and i've been illuminated and enjoyed both thoroughly thank you thank you it's been really real real pleasure thank you thank you how wonderful to speak to gavin we do have another episode coming up with gavin where we explore issues around his physical health and the fact that he is a wheelchair user. So if you like the sound of that, then please do listen out for that episode, which will be coming to you in the next couple of weeks. Now, I hope you found the topic about master's study

Starting point is 00:28:18 useful. I'd love to know what you think about that. Do come and tell me in the aspiring psychologist community. Of course, like this episode, rate and review it on Spotify and on Apple. If you're watching on YouTube, you know, like the video and subscribe to the channel. That would be brilliant. So yeah, I would love to know what's important to you at the moment please do let me know come and follow me on my social channels if you go to my link tree there's Dr Marianne Trent and it's a link tree you'll be able to find a link to that in my socials or if you're watching on YouTube you will see a QR code on screen now and you can scan that and then you'll be able to get to to my link tree where you can learn all about the clinical psychologist collective book the aspiring

Starting point is 00:29:13 psychologist collective book the tricky brain kit and the aspiring psychologist membership and so much more too thank you so much for being part of my world. I will look forward to catching up with you for our next episode, which will be available to you from 6am on Monday. Take care. guide with this podcast that you'll find to be on your way to being qualified it's the aspiring psychologist my name's yana and i'm a trainee psychological well-being practitioner I read the clinical psychologist collective book I found it really interesting about all the different stories and how people got to become a clinical psychologist it just amazed me how many different routes there are

Starting point is 00:30:27 to get there and there's no perfect way to become one and this kind of filled me of confidence that no I'm not doing it wrong and put less pressure on myself so if you're feeling a bit uneasy about becoming a clinical psychologist I definitely recommend this just to put yourself at ease and everything will be okay. But trust me, you will not put the book down once you start.

The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Distance learning Psychology Masters

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.