Question: How did you get into your job?

Anon answered on 23 Mar 2021:

I first thought about being an educational psychologist when I went to a child development centre for my Year 10 work experience. I loved it and it gave me my first taste of what a child psychologist might do. But I didn’t end up studying Psychology at that point, I went to do an English degree at university and then qualified as a primary school teacher.

I taught for 5 years, and my interest in psychology kept growing. I met a lot of children who I wished I could support better, so I started reading educational psychology books and articles to try and find the best way to help them. I loved learning about psychology and eventually decided to train as a psychologist.

You have to have a psychology degree to become an educational psychologist, so I took a year away from my job to do a Masters conversion degree. During that year I spoke to my school’s educational psychologist to find out more about their job, and I also did some job shadowing in another educational psychology service.

I then went back to teaching for a year and applied for the Educational Psychology training doctorate. When you study the doctorate, you spend a lot of time on placement, doing the job under supervision. I spent my final year in Ceredigion local authority and was very lucky that they gave me a job when I qualified. And here I am!