My Motivation To Pursue Psychology At The University Level
From early on, unbeknown to me psychology had encapsulated every aspect of my life. Born in Hong Kong into a multicultural family; the different cultures and behaviours shaped my identity. Unknowingly, we are all psychologists, we witness, observe and judge people everywhere we go, stripping away humanity and validating stereotypes. Humans are easily influenced and adapt to their surroundings consciously or subconsciously, thus forming complex societies.
Over the years, obedience has been of curiosity to social psychologists. Psychologists studied individual’s strong tendency to comply to commands given by authoritative figures. I have noticed obedience lead to hierarchies for example: in World War Two, German soldiers were forced to follow Hitler even if his orders seemed morally wrong. Moreover, Zimbardo; a psychologist carried out “The Stanford Prison Experiment” to study conformity to social roles. Findings revealed authoritative figures try to create utopia, but it leads to overbearing inequalities. I believe this is an even further ideology in our post-modern world, where digital revolution has transformed communication. People are more connected online; meaning human interactions have reduced. Thus, resulting in being “Alone Together”, causing a host of psychological issues to arise.
A topic of current interest of psychologists is mental health, particularly in young people who are more susceptible to mental health issues like suicide and depression due to increased cyber bullying and body-image issues. This particularly intrigues me, as my main motive for learning psychology is to become a play therapist. I want to utilise play and my academic knowledge to communicate with children to help them comprehend and deal with emotional distress such as: bereavement, divorce and abuse. Paris Goodyear-Brown is a play therapist and her Ted Talk on “How do children heal from trauma” struck a chord with me as she said; “Play is their talk and toys are their words”. It made me realise children lack verbal vocabulary to discuss traumatic experiences. So, I believe it is essential that children go through therapy at a young age to treat childhood issues and repressed emotions which could later affect their adulthood.
Currently, I juggle my studies with a part-time job as an athletics coach, coaching athletes aged five to twenty. I have always enjoyed working with children and it was a chance to interact with them. An incident that stands out from work is a case of bullying; a young athlete was being ostracised by his peers and was extremely distraught. I helped by comforting him and solving the matter through facilitating communication between them, whilst informing his parents of the situation. This is when I realised, I wanted to be a play therapist so I could provide a safe space for children like a play room to share their issues.
As an amateur photographer, I explored my passion as an Arts Media Manager for two years for the school executive team. Through my role, I learned editing and photoshopping, whilst managing lights and sounds for showcases. I also designed my own Paris inspired dress for the “Welcome to Paris” fashion competition, which was exhibited at Excel London. As part of the Young Enterprise competition, our business called “20Twenty” promoted equality and diversity through unisex accessories. We pitched our business at the O2 office and won an award for the best business plan. A strive for adventure led to achieving a Bronze and Silver Award in Duke of Edinburgh (DofE), with the Gold Award currently in progress. Through DofE, I took part in physical pursuits like trampolining, whilst volunteering at a tuition centre helping students. I would like to continue my journey in Psychology by pursuing it at university as it will provide me with an analytical and holistic perspective of humankind.
