The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - How to get psychology research published before you graduate

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

Show Notes for The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast Episode 101: How to Get Psychology Researched Published Before You GraduateThank you for listening to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. Application season is coming to a close soon – I hope it has gone well! In today’s episode of the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast, we invite the inspiring Matthew to share his experience on how he got involved in publishing research during his undergraduate studies He discusses the process digesting the data and publishing his research, which looks at schizophrenia, childhood trauma and brain cognition. So, join us, in this episode as Matthew talks about future goals, and gives aspiring psychologists a fabulous top tip in reducing burnout, amongst other key points. We hope you find it so useful.I’d love any feedback you might have, and I’d love to know what your offers are and to be connected with you on socials so I can help you to celebrate your wins!The Highlights:(00:00): Summary (01:10): Introducing Matthew(05:04): Studying Psychology in a 4-year course structure (07:21): Matthew’s unconventional route into psychology and thinking about the future (11:00): Matthew’s route into research in Schizophrenia whilst at university (16:11): It is worth taking the chances to ask!(18:36): What on earth is water diffusion in the brain?(22:00): The process of publishing – a whole new learning experience (24:04): From designing to publishing – a longitudinal process(26:58): How do scholarships for research work?(29:26): Navigating paid and unpaid work whilst studying (31:59): If you are thinking about psychology in your early career… (34:38): Matthew’s top tip for reducing burnout (37:35): Summary & close Hashtags: 🫶 To support me by donating to help cover my costs for the free resources I provide click here: https://the-aspiring-psychologist.captivate.fm/support📚 To check out The Clinical Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3jOplx0 📖 To check out The Aspiring Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3CP2N97 💡 To check out or join the aspiring psychologist membership for just £30 per month head to: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/membership-interested✍️ Get your Supervision Shaping Tool now: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/supervision📱Connect socially with Marianne and check out ways to work with her, including the Aspiring Psychologist Book, Clinical Psychologist book and The Aspiring Psychologist Membership on her Link tree: https://linktr.ee/drmariannetrent💬 To join my free Facebook group and discuss your thoughts on this episode and more: https://www.facebook.com/groups/aspiringpsychologistcommunityLike, Comment, Subscribe & get involved:If you enjoy the podcast, please do subscribe and rate and review episodes. If you'd like to learn how to record and submit your own audio testimonial to be included in future shows head to:

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,

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 in today's episode, I am talking to Matthew, who is an early career

psychologist. He is in the middle of his undergraduate psychology degree, and we are talking about research, how he has managed to get himself such robust, important research experience before he has even graduated. It is a brilliant episode. I challenge you not to be riveted and so interested and inspired. I feel inspired. I feel in awe having met him. Hope you find it so useful. If you're looking to become a psychologist Then let this be your guide With this podcast at your side You'll be on your way to being qualified

It's the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast With Dr. Marianne Trent and I am a qualified clinical psychologist. I hope that you are well wherever you are listening to this in the world and whatever stage of your career that you are at. I know that people listen to this podcast or watch it on YouTube from a variety of different locations around the world and from different stages of their career. And people do pitch to me, you you know and I love receiving pitches so today's episode is the result of a pitch that someone made to me if you have ideas for a podcast topic that you think will be an interesting and useful listen to people that are on their journey as aspiring psychologists or even as qualified psychologists for that matter do please let me

know please also do remember that the aspiring psychologist collective book and the clinical psychologist book are both available there will be links in the show notes and in the description how you can get your hands on that back listens to aspiring psychologist podcast episodes can be really useful for helping you to learn and understand topics that you might feel you need strengthening do also consider the aspiring psychologist membership and you can come out and hang out with me on the aspiring psychologist community on facebook as well i hope you will find today's episode so, so useful. We do discuss some tricky kind of brain concept and structure issues, but Matthew describes it all beautifully and

brilliantly. So I hope you will find it useful. I would love any feedback that you've got. Please do. If you're watching on YouTube, let me know what you think to the content in the comments please do like and subscribe whilst you're there as well and I will look forward to catching up with you on the other side of meeting Matthew I hope you enjoy it see you soon. Hi I just want to welcome along our guest for today Matthew. Matthew is an early career psychologist he is in year three of a four-year psychology undergraduate degree. Is that right, Matthew? Yeah, that's perfect. Yeah. Lovely. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming here today. And you reached out to me on LinkedIn because you kind of, you pitched an episode to me, which I love. So thank you for

doing that. And it was was you wanted to kind of talk a bit about research but before we do that if we could have a little bit of a chat about you and why you chose psychology and how your study's going. Sure yeah well first of all thanks for having me you know definitely the podcast and all the content has been very helpful you know navigating career paths and and all of that so thanks for having me. But yeah I grew up in Tuam in Galway, County Galway in Ireland. I'm currently living in Galway City and I'm in my third year as you said I like exercising in my free time. I love psychology, obviously. Yeah.

Thank you. Somewhat put you on the spot there, didn't I? So you are in Galway, which is where I recently came to do a keynote speech. And I just have to say, I absolutely loved the city and found everybody so welcoming. I think you couldn't be there that day, we haven't met in person but um yeah like just incredible and just a little plug if anyone wants to watch the vlog episode of my trip to Galway Matthew says it's quite good so I'll take that as credit thank you all right so um how come your uni is a four-year course?

So we're actually the first cohort that's doing the year three of four. So originally every other year it was first year and you do psychology and you pick two other subjects. So I pick Spanish and philosophy. And then your second year is just psychology. It's very competitive. It depends of what what grades you get you know you might have to do two subjects um but generally it was a three-year course so this year is the first time they're they're trying out a third year so people are going abroad uh to study in different universities people are doing research placements uh work placements and kind of educational settings or

um maybe like charity services and uh or organizations it's been really amazing like this the modules we have this semester a lot of electives um like medical psychology kind of seeing how psychology is applied in medical settings which has been really really interesting and community psychology is definitely one of my favorites so far we're kind of learning about like stuff alternative methods methods to like the scientific method the standard one maybe how you can work with communities and looking at like the role of a psychologist less as like a power dynamic and more of how you can kind of like communities guide the whole process and

really integrate them in in research and practices and stuff like that so i'm just talking about societal issues like misogyny racism and decolonization a lot of a lot of really broad but really important topics uh so um yes it's just been great really and the class is a lot smaller this year so we're all getting to know each other more and we're planned the night out now so it's so we're all it's a nice nice energy in the class you know oh good that sounds like a really you know it's funny you should use the word energy because you sound energized by it you sound like you're like oh my days i can't believe i get to learn this, you know, this is so exciting. I know that before we hit record, you'd said that you'd actually done a couple of years as a different undergraduate degree to begin with. Do you think

that's kind of left you with renewed vigour to really embrace this that feels right this time? Yeah, for sure. I think I definitely felt very lucky like that i had another chance to study something else you know um just because of money and everything you know uh but yeah i left home when i was 17 so i guess i really like didn't really know you know how to like manage money properly and i guess like i was being a teenager like having fun and doing what you do when you go to college first. But I did animation first for a year and that that was a very good course. It was in Athlone. I think we were the first ever like students to do that course, though. We were the first entry year. So I guess there's a lot of issues around funding and stuff and getting materials and sometimes lectures kind of dropped out and

there's a lot of stuff there so I actually changed to music then I did music for a couple months and then I left that and I decided I was going to work for a while and kind of really decide what I wanted to do so I ended up with a I applied to university but I actually got rejected because I hadn't done a language in my leave insert so I did a level five course kind of in applied social studies and there's a psychology module there and we're doing all like the the standard like Freud and very like like almost pop psychology kind of stuff and I just really enjoyed it like the case studies and we did like human growth and development um so i i just loved it and then i got into university of galway through that course um uh thankfully and then i took psychology and then i transferred from that into denominated

psychology and and yeah i just i feel super lucky every day to be studying and just like really happy really engaged you know I love that and honestly that's how I feel about my life like and my career I just it beams out of me I love it I can't believe I get to do this and people listen to me and and I also get to work clinically as well and that's really helpful for people um I just yeah just I pinch myself do you see yourself going into a psychology profession um yeah ideally i'd love to go down the route of clinical psychology since the summer uh working on on that paper i i definitely geared towards like maybe clinical neuropsychology if like if that would be possible you know it's a long road but ideally you know i'd like to do something like that maybe um yeah i'd love to work in psychology i'm trying not to limit myself too

much in terms of what what route i go down uh but whatever i'll be lucky enough to partake in that yes you know yeah i think you know you just you make the choices that are right for you at that time and you know you learn along the way and maybe you will like particular areas maybe you won't but it's you know keeping the things that work well for you and learning from the bits that don't go so well in the UK I think in terms of clinical neuropsychology you do your clinical psychology and then do a master's in neuropsychology um does your undergraduate confer the British Psychological Society kind of mark of approval in order to get onto UK doctorates or is it is it a little bit different with you being in Ireland? As far as I know it I think so

because I know the HSE like the health services here for assistant psychologist roles they look for like degrees that are accredited by the PSI the Irish Psychological Society or the the British British one so yeah okay lovely so I guess that means hopefully you've got options available for you to train in Ireland or maybe in the UK as well yeah that would be great yeah hopefully so you mentioned your research paper there could you tell us a little bit about what you've been up to uh yeah so last year they sent out a call for kind of scholarships during the summer research internships and i sent an email to one of my uh lecturers uh dr tom burke he's a clinical neuropsychologist in the hospital in galway here and um I told him I had an interest in

schizophrenia and kind of like social cognition um and personality disorders and different stuff like that so he recommended to apply for a neuroscience the Galway neuroscience uh scholarship um so he kind of told me like there there's a data set they've already collected they've been working on called iRelate a very big data set of people living with schizophrenia and kind of different social cognition tests and childhood trauma and genetics as well. So, yeah, he said I could work on that data set and maybe to pick a white matter track. So I did some research and came up with the unsnipped vesiculus it's a like it very no it's like a frontal white matter tract and uh he was like unbelievably helpful like super supportive i definitely wouldn't have been able to do any of it

without his guidance uh so he guided me along and we came up with an idea for the relationship between emotion recognition, like I suppose a facet of social cog is emotion recognition, the unsinu, and childhood trauma. So we kind of looked at the relationship between those three and kind of whether physical neglect in childhood kind of mediated the relationship between social cognition and, sorry, the development of the uncindered fasciculus in the brain. With the theory being that the tract is somehow linked and important to whether someone does or doesn't develop schizophrenia,

is that where it's rooted in uh yeah sort of kind of maybe it might be to do with social cognition um and we're kind of thinking maybe childhood trauma affects uh the development of of the that white matter tract and then through affecting that as the person grows older, their emotion recognition might be negatively affected. And then that could contribute to the development of schizophrenia that they might already be at risk for or other factors might be playing a risk. But it was really interesting in the research looking at, I suppose, how emotion recognition can play into someone who might be experiencing psychosis or at risk. They actually found that poor emotion recognition of neutral faces was predictive of transition to psychosis in people who are at risk. So someone might be talking to someone in a social setting and then they're picking up maybe an angry face from someone who has a neutral expression. And maybe

if that person already is at risk and maybe has maybe some delusional thinking or kind of paranoid thought styles that they might start thinking, oh, this person's angry at me and could cause a lot of distress then, I suppose. Yeah, and that's got really useful utility for even for us working with people with psychosis,

because actually when we were using our listening faces, they might look quite blank, they might look quite neutral. And if that can be interpreted really like negatively or hostilely, is that a word? Then that's problematic, isn't it? So I guess this is why I love research, because it teaches us so much about the person, about their experience of the world, and, you you know how to understand and make things less less frictiony you know so that things work better all around and that people have a better experience of it you mentioned a data set there but um it wasn't one i'm familiar with could you tell us what the data set is how do you spell the data set that you mentioned um so it's like a lowercase i and

then the word relate uh so r-e-l-a-t-e i'm not in i'm not you know i don't fully understand the the whole project it's a very big project uh but it's it's ongoing there's been a lot of papers published from it and it's uh they did a big kind of neuroimaging on people living with schizophrenia and social cognition tests um you know and uh kind of what what my uh supervisor uh dr burke said to me was these people have given their time you know to for us to collect this data so it's important that we kind of use it to the fullest that we can to, you know, benefit other people. So, yeah, there's actually a really interesting documentary about schizophrenia on RTE. I'm not sure it's not on RTE now, but if you look it up online, it might come up. And there's lecturers from University of Galway and from the IRLA project and the lead of that project, Professor Gary O'Donoghue.

And he talks about schizophrenia and about the project. the I Relate Project and the lead of that project, Professor Gary O'Donoghue. And he talks about schizophrenia and about the project. And yeah, it's really fascinating if anyone's interested. Sounds great. I can see why this is kind of evoked this interest in you. And I guess what I really love is that you're learning so much at a stage of your career where actually usually we're probably quite limited just to textbooks but you're you're seeing like real world applications and real world real world research for this and I think that lights you up you know and but but kudos to you as well Matthew because you're clearly the kind of guy that that reaches out and asks for opportunities you know like you did with coming on the podcast and like you did with even approaching the professor at Galway Uni.

You know, you you have the similar to me. You have the idea and you give yourself permission to to ask and to explore. And, you know, the worst they can ever do is say no. But you never know where it might lead. Yeah, I think something I've learned the last few years is that you know it's always worth taking chances you know uh a lot of the a lot of the good things that have happened over the past few years is because other people give me chances and i kind of give myself a chance in a lot of situations uh just like earlier this year i started uh i used to do boxing when i was younger i kind of lost it for a while so i went back I started MMA and that was just like you know obviously I was super nervous beforehand but it was just something like

throwing myself in there and and challenging myself with something new and kind of giving giving myself a chance to I guess to to take a chance and see what happens and it's honestly been one of the best decisions in my life you know just it's been so important for connecting myself back with my body while I'm while I'm kind of psychology can get very up here so it's kind of an important balance for me to to have both you know yeah exercise is only something I've really come to a latter stage of my current life I think it's a latter life but I'm only 42 um yeah like it just wasn't something that was around for me but I really really enjoy it now and I like you say it helps me to to balance myself kind of um yeah body and mind so with your um you know absolutely what you said is right that the

professor had said we've got a duty of care really to to do everything we can with this research with these um you know this data that the people have given so freely of their time to create so what did you do with it what happened next yeah so um we had i think just about 105 um uh well 58 participants. And then I'm not sure, 116, whatever double that is. I had to basically use a software. It's a diffusion tensor imaging software. So we had all the MRI scans and then they were transferred to, I think, a DTI file. And then I used that program. It was really fascinating.

It was a bit mind-blowing at the time. I could basically see their brain scan in kind of 3D. And part of the internship was to learn how to segment a tract. So to basically get rid of all the other white matter tracts and and single out on this specific one and then we use the measure called fractional anisotropy so kind of a measure of the the water diffusion in the in the tract and how the integrity of the tract so whether those water molecules are really like densely packed together or kind of sparse though and that can kind of i suppose by looking at other research that can give

us an indication of how well kind of functioning it is uh so um like my supervisor gave a really good uh analogy of it it's kind of like a road uh from one place to another and the white matter tract is like the road sending the information and then if there's like potholes on that road it can kind of information can get a bit damaged on the way um so basically i went through just over 100 um left and right um on the left and right sides of their brain um so the bilateral instruments uh segmented all of those and we we ran the statistics on the um on the fa values and then we had pre-collected social cognition uh tests uh data so and childhood trauma so we just kind of did some like mediation analysis and correlations and kind of seeing what was coming out of those and and yeah absolutely incredible and hearing you speak like even I don't know what

stuff is like it's amazing like even that you get to know this stuff and you get to be so competent um and you know capable at what you're talking about and what you're understanding this is massively important and you know it sounds like you you know just really found a really wonderful opportunity where you've been able to help you know a research process but you've also learned so much and you know that will be useful for you in all of your areas of your career in future you know you'll have this understanding about in all of your areas of your career in future you know you'll have this understanding about the way that the brain works and what what might stop it from working and a really important part of what we do in this profession of ours is to do the

psychoeducation for people and to de-shame a process in helping people to understand what might be going on for them and how it's not their fault and I think sometimes being able to really talk about the neurobiology of someone's brain can be really really powerful so you've absolutely got a head start in that regard. Did you publish? Are you in the process of publishing? Yeah so we're actually in the, it's a whole new learning experience, the process of publishing. It's very, you know, I mean, yeah, we're in the process of kind of communicating with reviewer feedback, peer reviewer feedback right now. So it's quite intense, but not in a bad way. You know, it's definitely a really good learning curve.

So me and my supervisor, he's actually out of the country at the moment, so we're kind of going back and forth on emails and doing all the track changes and kind of addressing some of the comments. But again, it's really helpful. I absolutely hate track changes, honestly. I hate it with an absolute passion. And I can never manage to get everything to disappear off the screen when it still says the sum there.

And you're like, there's nothing. Yeah, I'm more of a fan of a comment box than track changes. It doesn't play well with me. You've done well there to not say this process is frustrating and tedious because I know it absolutely can be. And then waiting, the ex be and then waiting for waiting the exquisite torture of waiting for other people to kind of do their bits can be really really difficult do you know what kind of what level of authorship you're going to be you know

first second third fourth how does it how does it look for you at the moment Matthew? So again like my supervisor Dr Burke he's been like really amazing in like guiding me through this process and really advocating you know I suppose for me to be a part of it and yeah so he's he's went out of his way to put me in his first author and yeah so that's how it's looking so good. That is so nice what a lovely guy I was hoping you'd say that because this sounds like your baby and you know absolutely amazing what sort of period of time are we talking about from when you first started really to to now to having it kind of you know the peer review comments and all of that jazz yeah so I think it was around the middle of May that that we kind of you know the peer review comments and all of that jazz? Yeah so I think it was around

the middle of May that we kind of were sure about what we were doing and we did a pre-registration as well and then once we kind of did that we started around I think the middle of May maybe like just before June and then we wrapped up at the end of August then because I was starting back on my this semester on the on September so so yeah just I suppose those those kind of three months was where the bulk of it was was done yeah. Amazing and then you just kind of written up since then or you wrote up in that process as well? Yeah so we did the pre-registration and then we kind of we were kind of writing bits as we were going I did like the literature search and I did kind of a almost like a meta-analysis table for that to kind of lay out everything we had and then the methods were were pretty much

the same for from other papers we had done just because it's pre-collected data and then it was just the results in the discussion, really, once we had everything collected. So, yeah, August was really the writing up the paper section. Okay. Incredible. What an amazing way to use your summer break in a really productive way. You know, future Matthew will absolutely thank you for this,

because it will also, you know's it's an area of psychology that people often feel daunted by and don't understand and will kind of hide and run away from but actually you've really embraced this and you know that will pay you rich dividends you know it will look great on your forms for applications as well but it means that you will you know when you go to services you will you will look for research opportunities you will look for audit opportunities and you know you will be thinking as a research practitioner which is absolutely what we we train our psychologists to be so I'm just blown away absolutely blown away by what you've been able to achieve and you know this takes dogged determination this takes showing up day out day after day and you

know this is likely an unpaid internship and so this is just your passion for developing your own career but helping others at the same time I think it's really really admirable yeah I think um you know I had a fantastic time I think it's also you know a credit. Yeah, I think, you know, I had a fantastic time. I think it's also, you know, a credit to a lot of the staff and the resources and support in the university as well. You know, I originally applied for a health research board scholarship that would have been more focused on kind of stroke victims and things like that.

So it was my supervisor that kind of directed me to the neuroscience scholarship and really just that um so it was my supervisor that kind of directed me to um the neuroscience scholarship and really just hands-on you know so it's definitely credit to him he really allowed me to to to be there and kind of work at it then so I definitely felt an obligation then to to make sure I did all I could you know. Okay so the scholarship means that you get some sort of remuneration does it is that Is that what the scholarship can tell you? You don't need to share figures with us. But how does it work from a scholarship angle? So the scholarship was actually eight weeks.

So we had it. It's not just psychology. The scholarship is kind of all like medicine and a lot of different areas in the college. So you pick a supervisor, put a project and uh and then hopefully you get the scholarship and then you have eight weeks to kind of work on the scholarship together um so yeah we did that and thankfully we got the approval and uh then so that so that was a paid scholarship for two months and then the third month um thankfully they they extended extended it for another month uh just through funding of the iRelate project uh because we were still writing up the the paper so so thankfully yeah

yeah isn't it amazing though because actually you know i know that not everyone's gonna work for free but for that sort of experience you might have been like i've done it for free like i've learned so much it's been so brilliant but you know getting pay is a bonus and you know we should be paid for our time we should know that it's okay for you to earn money out of your really intricate complex skills that you've learned over time and that is real hours that you spent looking at all that data and collating it and putting it all together. And so, you know, absolutely. I know it's contentious, honorary or voluntary work, but we do deserve to be paid. We're highly skilled. And, yeah, I'm thrilled you were paid.

But, you know, I absolutely would have. I know I would have done it for free if I'd been in a position to afford it as well. Yeah. Yeah. Same. Yeah. You know, I almost forgot about it at points, you know, position to afford it as well yeah yeah same yeah you know I almost forgot about it at points you know that that it was paid as well which is great um you know I guess on the other side of things I'm happy it was paid as well because I guess I wouldn't have been able to fully do it for three months I work in a hotel as well at the uh part-time and usually during the summers I'd work full-time you know to kind of save up for my fees when I was paying them or rent or stuff like that so it felt very surreal as well to to be studying something and then be getting paid for it even though I still felt like I you know

I technically don't have a degree in psychology at all at the moment so it did feel a bit kind of maybe a bit of imposter syndrome but not not too much you know in in the beginning days I guess yeah and when people are doing counseling degrees or counseling psychology degrees or professional qualifications they kind of often tell me that they're having to work whilst they're whilst they're doing their doctorate qualifications and then they graduate they're professionally qualified they get like a band seven or equivalent post and then they're like all right I just have to do one job this isn't this is novel and I'm getting paid a reasonable wage wow this is radical um yeah like people do you know I worked when I was at uni as

well I worked with disabled students I just I loved thinking about my undergraduate degree as an opportunity to learn stuff at the same time and I think it's a really exceptional way of making a really wise head start in your profession because it's it's not I don't I can't speak for you but for me it wasn't terrifically labor intensive I think there was a minimum maybe even a maximum of 10 hours a week including seminars you know it wasn't it wasn't a big demand on my time and so absolutely I could have done more than I even did. Thankfully this year now the third year we're doing this is not I suppose it's not contributing to our final grade so it's nice in that way to give us kind of I guess less not less pressure to do well, but still want to do well.

But I suppose more space to focus on what we're learning as opposed to pressure on assignments, which is really nice. Yeah. And also, you know, given your age, it gives you all of your cohort more time for your own brains to develop to be able to get yourselves to be in the position where you're able to really immerse yourself in your final year to get your best possible grade so that you are performing optimally so that's kind of it's kind of nice you get a bonus year to learn to see what excites you to see what you like what you don't um and yeah you get these little information nuggets that you just get to store but you suddenly like oh i remember something about that and then you yeah you just it builds that level of confidence i think to be able to think about things in future so oh lovely lovely

lovely to talk to you but why if someone is perhaps an earlier career psychologist than you maybe they're doing um you know they're still in their sixth form education and they're thinking oh i don't know about psychology you know should i shouldn't i isn't everyone doing that what's the point what would you say why should people consider doing a psychology undergraduate degree yeah i think um i think psychology is incredibly unique in that um i suppose the more you immerse yourself and learn about the subjects it it can kind of run in tangent with your own personal growth you know the things you learn i suppose as you get older or you go through different

experiences it can it can change like how you learn about the things in your course or like you said those nuggets can kind of pop up again and like, Oh yeah, that I learned that last year, but it makes more sense now after you've experienced something or you think a bit more. I think it's so applicable to all situations of your life, kind of, I suppose, like introspective situations, thinking about your own kind of, I suppose, internal human condition and stuff. And then kind of outside of yourself as well. i was saying i work in a hotel so i'm an accommodation supervisor so we kind of have you know cleaners and and guests and that that's a very kind of

interactive interpersonal position you know where i guess like one example was was uh we had a guest that was very angry one time she was just very upset you know right right I guess like one example was we had a guest that was very angry one time. She was just very upset, you know, rightfully so. She left her phone charger in the room and she was very upset because everybody who was talking to her seemed to say, no, it's not in the room. It's definitely not there. And I had talked to her on the phone and the first thing I said to her was like, you know, I believe you. I believe that the charger was in the room and uh it's it's i just tried to validate her feelings first and then then let her know um we have a procedure for lost

property it's just not here but i do believe you that's she was kind of more upset that people weren't didn't seem to be hearing her you know um so i think uh little situations like that is just where i feel like uh before I started the degree, it's really just, and to now, it's really just opened up my mind on so many different areas of myself personally, but also externally as well. Brilliant. What a brilliant real-world example. And, you know, it's really annoying to lose your phone charger because then you can't charge your phone. And I speak from a very recent experience of my iPad charger having broken.

And to replace it 48 pounds like it's not it's not a small amount of money you know and if you have to layer on the fact that oh no I've forgotten it and there's all that you know blame and shame and all of that like I've caused my own misery like it's really challenging but yeah it sounds like you're a wonderful member of that team to be able to kind of draw everything together. And, you know, I love what you say about the human condition. It's absolutely true. If you've got any advice for anybody that's specifically Matthew-ish, you know, about how to reduce burnout when you're an aspiring psychologist, what would you say? I think socialising is incredibly important.

You know, if you're introverted, that's okay not to force yourself to be someone else but i suppose find um social situations where you feel comfortable you know something you have an interest in maybe it's society in college or um maybe something simple like asking a friend to go to the arcade or play soccer or whatever whatever you're interested in you know personally for me it was it was kind of starting up something I had an interest in. It may have happened in my younger self. I used to like boxing. So I started the MMA again. And that was a place where I could just go

and fully be in my body and leave all psychology or anything just outside the door. And that was very helpful for like reducing that kind of burnout. I think where burnout comes in is when it's just constantly running on your mind. And if you have a half an hour free, you're anxious because you're thinking about forgetting something or, you know, an assignment or something. So I think doing something where you can be fully in your body is very helpful. Yeah, and you described so beautifully the process of mindfulness there and why it can be so empowering and, you know, wholesome,

whereas actually mindfulness gets a bit of a yawny, bad rep, I think. But what it is is it's just allowing yourself to literally do what you're doing in that moment without being distracted by all of the noise and the chatter and for me like every lunchtime when I'm at home I will that's awful I'm not eating a mindful lunch because what I'm doing is I've got like these games that I play on my iPad homescapes and gardenscapes I am a bit of a homescapes and gardenscapes geek but it allows me to literally just focus on that and the enjoyment of my food without all the noise in the chat or the kids stuff that I've got to do and my clients

and the podcast and, you know, my aspiring psychologist stuff. And I just, it gives me a really wonderful, mindful break in the day. So I absolutely hear what you say and I love it and support it. Yeah, for sure. I think, you know, that was something I definitely had to kind of learn by fire, I suppose, like in my second year or even in my first year. You know, we have in the university, the points are quite high to get into denominated psychology so we have a there's a system where the top 15 people in the class uh can or maybe a bit more than that can transfer to denominated if you didn't get it originally by by leaving cert points so i suppose there's a lot of pressure you know in first year on people you know and people might not even want to tell them each other what their goal is you know everyone's kind of looking at each other a bit competitively and uh then kind

of when you start second year the workload goes up and it's kind of already a bit burned out from first year so I really have to learn to kind of yeah prioritize kind of my my physical health and mental health I'm just in awe of you Matthew and that is what I will say in your intro and outro like I'm excited for your career in future I would like you to keep me posted on how things go and thank you for empowering so many people to think about how they can gain research experience or any opportunity for that matter I think it's going to be such a wonderfully well received episode so thank you for pitching it to me and thank you for the really important work that you're doing and

yeah let me know how your degree classification goes next year for sure yeah thanks so much for having me and for all the content as well and the book everything has been incredibly helpful so thanks so much oh well you're so welcome like i said i just love it it doesn't feel like work it feels like a privilege to do what i do and i hope that you continue to feel that way about about this profession so thank you so much um look after wonderful goalie i'm sure i'll be back in future yeah definitely thanks so much thank you thank you oh my gosh what a guy what an inspiration um i really would love you to like this episode and give matthew some kudos because he's just oh he's like a force to be reckoned with isn't he and he does it all with such a laid back approach

like um oh i just did this thing did this you know correlated this did that looked at that what a guy you know just really inspirational and so yeah i hope that you find it awe-inspiring i hope that it helps you think about what what your achilles heels might be and how you might go about strengthening them so yeah let me know what you think do um yeah do please watch the galway episode that we spoke about as well it's about my experiences of being a keynote speaker for the irish psychological society you may also find it helpful to watch the replay Q&A sessions, which you can do by going to my YouTube channel, going to the live videos or clicking on the playlist option for Q&A sessions. People say really wonderful things about them as being helpful for their psychology applications. And then also there's some there for interviews as well.

Thank you so much for being part of my world i look forward to catching up with you for the next episode of the podcast which will be along to you from 6am on monday take care if you're looking to become a psychologist Then let this be your guide With this podcast at your side You'll be on your way to being qualified It's the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast

With Dr. Marianne Trent My name's Jana 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 to get there and there's no perfect way to become one. And this kind of filled me with 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'd 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.