So I’ve once again been thinking about graduate schools, and the eventual implications of those choices and some choices I’ve made at this point.

Saturday night, I said the following “If I had to do it all over again, I’d probably be a Cultural Anthropology major,” which only vaguely resembles truth on second investigation. As far a social science goes, I like cultural anthropology a lot, but I don’t really want to do that major, so I’m glad I’m doing what I’m doing, but that statement has pushed me to look at yet another breed of graduate programs.

I started this grad school search process by looking at neat clinical programs where where was some sort of women’s studies possibility. There are problems with clinical psych programs, they don’t tend to be flexible, and they tend to be really hard to get into, and I want to have other options.

My next step on this journey, was to look at personality psych programs. Now there aren’t many here, and they’re hard to get into, (but I think a bit easier). They seem to address psychology using units of study that I think are appropriate, and at least theoretically I’d still be able to practice clinician if I wanted to (because the internship and licensing process is fairly distinct from the research portion of the Ph.D., so that’s cool. Also tied up in this is an interest in community, life history, and narrative psychology (psychologies?).

This has also lead me in the direction of interdisciplinary social science Ph.D. programs, mostly psychological anthropology, cultural psychology. I have 3-4 spaces for courses over the 2006-07 school year, which I think I’ll use to soup up my anthropology background, in this direction.

Where this takes me, will be a site of further deliberation in the near future, so expect that. At this point I’d like to present a list of programs that I’ve been thinking of. No real order, but a vague one.

  • Joint Ph.D. in Personality Psychology and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan--Ann Arbor
  • The Ph.D. program from the Committee on Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago
  • The Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program at Clark University in Worchester, MA.
  • The Personality/Cultural Ph.D. program at the University of Toronto

I’m sure this list will grow and change in the near futre. There are also programs like the Clinical program at Temple University, and maybe even Clinical Psychology or even Sociology/Gender Studies at SUNY Stoney-brook.

Stay Tuned! Cheers, sam