Attention All Pre-Psychology Professors!!!

Hello!

             Welcome to the world of psychology; a world where the mind is studied, behavior is analyzed, and human nature is described! As a future psychology professor, you will be responsible for teaching the next generation of psychiatrists and psychoanalysts the correct and ethnically sound way to understand, diagnose, and treat psychological disorders. You will need to understand the differences in the types of psychology and be clear and direct in teaching each of them so as to not show your biases. Professoring is not the same as teaching; you will have a body of students to address but you will also have publishers, faculty members, board members, and an entire scientific world that you will need to communicate with. In order to do this job correctly, there are a few things you will have to understand about being a professor in psychology.

But First, A History

            You may want to immediately jump into the topics and ways you will be teaching, but first you must understand both the distant and the recent past found in psychology education. Way back in the past, in the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans, psychology was not a recognized science. In fact, it was considered a branch of philosophy. This is significant because it reveals a side of psychology that has been long since forgotten. Philosophy is the study of knowledge, reality, and existence; a philosopher is concerned with deriving the truth about things that may seem obscured or blurred. Since psychology deals with the mind and things that scientists can’t directly see, you have to be careful while instructing your class not to make something seem more concrete than it has been proven or you may facilitate mistakes like the Medieval Catholics. They acted on hypotheses that had not been validated and ended up torturing many people, trying to rid them of the “demons” that they thought must have been causing their disorders. (For more information on historical treatments of psychological conditions click here.)With the modern ethics code you wouldn’t be able to promote torture, but there are untested treatments in this era that you must be careful while discussing. Keep an open, but philosophically skeptical, mind.

            Recent history in psychology is also relevant towards your goal of being a successful psychology professor. Psychology is a relatively new area of science and researchers are constantly coming up with new theories and disbanding old ideas. You will need to stay up to date with the current discoveries made in psychology so you do not end up teaching something that has been proven to be inaccurate. But you also need to be familiar with the slightly less recent ideas of significant psychologists from the past. Freud, for example, was a pioneer in the field of psychology who has been proven wrong in almost every one of his theories but is still noteworthy for his contributions in modern psychology. He completely revolutionizing the way scientists view the relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind.

Your Audiences Await

            Keeping an open mind is also important for less academic reasons as a psychology professor. You will have many different audiences that you will need to communicate with in this field. One of the most important is going to be your students because their futures, and the level they will be interested in psychology, is often influenced by how well you teach. Make your class too basic and you risk leading your students to be ill-prepared for the future, too hard, and you will steer them away from the field of psychology. A rude, uncaring professor will lead to a transfer of bad feelings from the professor to the course subject and will leave students doubting their desire to go into psychology. However, bear in mind that your job as a professor will not be to please, entertain, or convert everyone to the study of psychology. Your job is to teach, so use simple, direct, and respectful language while lecturing. A joke or light-minded comment is appropriate occasionally (after all you don’t want to be boring) but they should be used as needed, not as a constant source of amusement.

            You will also need to address the professional realm and your peers through regular research and publishing. In some universities this will actually be your main job, so if you prefer the teaching aspects of being a professor, you will need to keep that in mind while applying for university positions. In some respects you have more freedom in this aspect of professoring; you work on your own schedule, you usually work by yourself, and you can address more controversial issues because you are exploring new answers, not teaching the already accepted solutions. (For more information on the researching/teaching dynamic of being and becoming a university professor, click here.)

However, there are a few things that restrict you in the research and publishing side of being a professor. You will be dealing with qualified professors and researchers who are at the same level or even higher than you are. As a classroom professor the students automatically respect you because you have power over their grades and authority over them. However, as an academic writer you have to establish your credibility through your work. People will respect you if your ideas, research, and writing ability prove to them that you are respectable. Treat other researchers with the esteem and regard that they deserve and try to form as many networking connections as you can because you want other professors to endorse your work and vouch for your credibility.

A Good Idea

             You may wonder why you need to take a lot of the same psychology courses as people who will become psychologists and psychiatrists because clientele aren’t an audience you will need to address. As a professor you probably will not need to help people with their disorders or other psychological problems. However, you still need to be able to teach students what they can expect in the actual practicing of psychology. Plus, if you decide to take a break from professoring and get some real world experience as a psychologist, you will appreciate the classes that you take now. In fact, it may be a good idea to work as a psychologist for a little while prior to professoring so that you will have real-world experience and will be able to help your students should they have a question you wouldn’t be able to answer otherwise.

            Psychology professors’ jobs are more similar to other university jobs than other psychology jobs, but you need to understand both elements in order to be happy and successful. You will need to practice communicating with students during the teaching part of your day and be able to compile and record your research in a professional manner while you are doing the publishing side of this career. Pay attention while learning about the history behind modern psychology in order to learn from others’ mistakes and grow from their ideas. Learning appropriate communication and historical context for being a professor in psychology will be an incredibly useful asset in your adventure into grad school and beyond.

Good Luck!
(For more information on what psychology professoring entails, including median wages and outlook trends, click here.)



Works Cited

Foerschner, Allison M. The History of Mental Illness: From "Skull Drills" to "Happy Pills", Student Pulse, 2010. Web. 12 Dec. 2014.

Graduate Study in Psychology. OoCities, 2009. Web. 12 Dec. 2014.

Psychology Teachers, Postsecondary: Utah. CareerOneStop. U.S. Department of Labor, 2014. Web. 12 Dec. 2014.