My Summers continue to be epic since the ultimate life shakeup last year! I still can’t believe that I have embarked on this new path of academia, but I’m so very glad that I did. Each week has felt like it’s own mini lifetime and adventure as I learned new language and developed the courage to convey the wisdom I’ve collected from 20+ years of corporate life. To say that it has been exhilarating, would be an understatement. And to top it all off, I managed to accomplish this milestone WHILE kicking off the busiest season of my Jewelry business that has been transforming right along with me, and co-hosting my monthly podcast with Dr. Tamika Sanders.
I’ll save the details of all my extracurricular activities for another post as this one is lengthy as is, but I wanted to commemorate this particular accomplishment by highlighting my experiences and lessons learned along the way in case it could help someone else.
Courses:
Psychology 565: Organizational Psychology
This course provides an overview of the field, focusing on psychology’s role at the individual, group, and organizational levels. It begins with an examination of organizational structure, culture, and design, exploring how these elements influence group dynamics and leadership. The course covers the psychological concepts that explain and predict behavior in organizations, focusing on leadership effectiveness and employee development throughout the talent management life cycle. It also addresses organizational development, change management, and employee well-being, including work stress, diversity, inclusion, and job burnout. Students engage with scientific journals, contemporary research, case studies, and applied workplace examples.
Psychology 550A: Pro-Seminar in Human Behavior: Foundations in Business Psychology
This course provides the foundation for learning to approach the world of business and organizations through the lens of applied psychology. The general purpose of the course is to ask: How can psychology illuminate real problems faced in the broad areas of consumer marketing, employee management, and organizational dynamics? The course spotlights contemporary psychology theory and research, seeking intersections between theory and business/organizational applications. We sample diverse disciplines within psychology and aligned fields, including social, social-cognitive, personality and motivation, behavioral economics, neurobehavior, human factors, and cross-cultural and developmental perspectives and hear insight from USC scholars discussing their work. Additionally, through weekly career activities, the course broadens your perspectives of how to promote your own professional brand.
Initial challenges:
- Disruption from layoff and unemployment led to a loss of structure.
- Survival mode, juggling multiple entrepreneurial efforts, education, job search, and well-being without sufficient support.
- Extended time away from academia resulted in decreased academic skills.
- Intimidation and resistance due to unfamiliarity with APA style.
- Inexperience with academic research and complex articles.
- Consistent lack of follow-through from professional contacts when needed for school interviews.
- Feelings of inadequacy and diminished confidence stemming from the above challenges.
What shifted?
My livelihood has been at stake for over a year with no safety net other than a dwindling retirement fund and new debt being taken on with no grants or scholarships. I knew that while I had great people within my evolving support system, ultimately I could rely on no one but myself for my survival. After one night in particular during week 3, in feeling disappointed in myself for having turned in an assignment late 4 minutes and 16 seconds late due to being let down by a connection, not securing a backup, and not properly balancing my time between school work and survival mode activities, and also not being cognizant that the cutoff time was 11:55pm, not midnight, I made a decision and declaration to myself and my professor.
I refused to let my circumstances further dictate or exacerbate my circumstances.
I knew that I hated broken records, being a broken record and causing others to be broken records, so I made it a priority to learn how to write in APA style in a way that worked for me. I did not have the capacity for reading the book on top of all the other course material, but I did know how to use YouTube. I also knew from reading the prerequisite book on Mindset, that I didn’t have to cling so much to getting the perfect score. I would instead embrace a balance of learning the hard way by accepting the point deductions for the APA concepts that I still didn’t understand to ensure and reinforce my understanding. I was communicative with my professors and looked forward to their feedback, while celebrating my growing capabilities with APA.
I became more and more familiar with conducting academic research and the layouts of academic journals through reading learning materials week by week. But this was further enhanced as I became engaged with my assignments centered on preparing me for my Treatise! I was able to recognize the patterns and intentions of the structure of my course materials and how they helped to build upon the skills necessary to combat my initial challenges. While my grades had never actually been in question, I reduced the point deductions by improving my research and APA skills
Recognition of a Shaky Foundation
In my fifth week, I recognized that while I had experienced some wins, I still didn’t have a handle on this new life and integrating it as I’d never lived under these circumstances before. I had a number of things I was trying to manage personally, academically and professionally and only a finite amount of resources, time and energy. I remember venting on my IG stories about how my expectations for how time consuming school would be had not lined up with my reality after having spent ALL DAY and EVERY DAY on my school work one week with literally no time for anything else outside of eating and sleeping. I knew that remaining in that state of exasperation and ironically identifying that I was experiencing burnout as I was literally learning about it through my I/O Psych textbook would not be sustainable to my health or program success. I didn’t have a solution yet, but I knew that I just had to keep pushing and making it to the next week. I also leaned on having a few trusted friends to express myself to combat feelings of isolation.
Then came the mid terms, which brought another wake up call. I had not been doing a very good job of properly and consistently processing what I had read for assignment instructions, resulting in me not realizing that that I missed key details that I would have to address in the final hours. Both midterms were vastly different in what they required and took way longer than I had hoped. While I turned them both in on time, I remember the ping of panic after realizing 10 minutes after the fact, that I had not documented my time spent on the one requiring me to do so, despite making it a point to track it with my calendar. I just KNEW that I was going to be dinged for that, but I also knew, that it was above me now and it would serve no one for me to be stressed out over any of it while awaiting my grades.
I received my grades back on that midterm first and I remember my hands shaking as I looked at it to see that all of the energy I had spent in anxiety, was unnecessary. I DID know what I was doing, I DID know what I was talking about and I WAS learning! When I looked at what I had lost points on, it made sense. And while that small oversight was my only flaw, I didn’t hyper focus on it and instead felt gratitude for the positive feedback provided by my professor.
By the time I got my other mid term back, it was clear to me that I had officially socialized myself into being a student again after all these years and my current obstacles.
There is no ONE thing that helped me through this, but I will try to articulate the system of things:
- Self Awareness and practicing a growth mindset
- Not clinging to perfection
- Engagement with what I am learning in school, applying it to life and planning for how I will leverage it post graduation
- Building my competence, which builds my confidence
- Having faith that everything will work out so long as I continue
- Making good decisions, establishing boundaries and being selective about how I spend my energy and with who
- Recognizing that we living in an environment that is hostile to our health and wellbeing, giving grace to myself, empathy to others.
- Not taking it personally that I don’t have the influential reach I once had and understanding it’s interconnectedness for the work I am setting out to do.
This first semester wasn’t easy and way more happened than can fit into this single blog entry, but WOW I really DID that! I am proud to say that finished strong with A’s in both courses and I have laid the foundation for my future endeavors and now have a much wider world available to me than ever before. Education is truly the path to liberation and look forward to playing my role in what’s to come!
Thank you for reading and feel free to let me know if this has helped you and please share with those who you think it might help by using the links below!
With much love and gratitude,
