Careers in Psychology Following a Path: A Essay

Careers in Psychology

Following a Path:

A Career in Psychology

A career in psychology is not only exciting, but also rewarding. Yet many feel that the options with regards to finding a career in this field are limited. However, when one looks upon the various characteristics of a psychological career, one can certainly find something that strikes the interest and that is a feasible position to pursue. Contrary to popular belief, thus, there are many career paths out there, in the field, in addition to clinical psychology careers or research-based postions. Indeed, an individual can choose from 16 clusters, according to the CTE website. These cluster are:

Agriculture, Food & Natural Resources

Architecture & Construction

Arts, Audio/Video Technology & Communications

Business Management & Administration

Education & Training

Finance

Government & Public Administration

Health Science

Hospitality & Tourism

Human Services

11. Information Technology

12. Law, Public Safety, Corrections & Security

13. Manufacturing

14. Marketing

15. Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics

16. Transportation, Distribution & Logistics

From the simple bulk of writing above, one can see the many, many options. I have listed these options to simply show that going from despair from not being able to choose a variety of careers, one can be quite overwhelmed when finding out just how many options one has. Though at first I, myself, thought about a clinical career, after seeing these I started thinking about working in government and public administration. The paragraphs below will thus expand upon my understanding of this path, as well as what I have found out about it after further research.

According to the descriptions found on the website referenced above, with regards to the government and public administration "cluster," this website describes it as "Planning and executing government functions at the local, state and federal levels, including governance, national security, foreign service, planning, revenue and taxation, and regulations."

This appealed to me because I have always been interested in government, as well as in how the political process works in general. The thought of being able to work in the foreign service is especially appealing as I have always dreamed of traveling. The combination of politics and psychology thus seemed, at first, to be ideal for me.

The career I chose can also be known as political psychology, and in this capacity I could and would probably work within the Department of State. For this reason, it is vital that I will have a higher degree, and perhaps even a PhD, instead of a Masters in psychology or two masters, in psychology and politics. Working for the U.S. government in any capacity is rather a long and arduous process. Of course, when one imagines an exciting psychological career in the foreign service, one does not think about this. In order to see just what requirements were necessary, I went to the State Department website, and chose the Foreign Service Career tab. I saw that in this capacity there were many ways in which one can get into this career path.

While being on the above-mentioned website, I also saw that one had civil service options, as well as positions that one could find at usajobs.gov, as website that caters solely to governmental jobs. Here, I saw psychology positions, whether in the army or otherwise, that were truly very interesting and very well paid (around $100,000 and above). In order to be….....