career goals

I had such a good lecture today, for abnormal psych. A woman from the centre for psychotherapy came along to give the lecture on eating disorders. First she told us about how when she was studying for her psychology degree she was told her marks weren't good enough to get into honours. She said that she always knew she wanted to work with people, she just didn't know how. She did her masters and then has been working with people with eating disorders ever since. She said that you don't need to do psychology to become a counsellor, but it helps to get jobs, and that it's a good idea to do some volunteering. She now has her dream job. She really inspired me, and I realised that my dream job is to be helping people with mental health problems. I feel a lot better about my career goals now. She recommended becoming a lifeline counsellor, so I'm going to do the training course and see how it goes.

I got 85 for my essay, the one I was having panic attacks over. I feel ambivalent. I was excited and happy, but also confused and somehow dissappointed. I still got some very critical comments, which of course they do because psychology students have to write a lot of essays, and feedback is good. I still keep thinking that they must have made a mistake with the mark. It also said that I had 0% plagiarism (or "similarity" as they call it now). I didn't even think this was possible, but maybe they take out all the references before they calculate it. I should be so proud! But I doubt myself even more. Or, should I say, I doubt the marks they gave me. Both the mark and the similarity score are not what I expected. I was expecting a credit, and an okay similarity score. Seriously, how did I get an HD? Is it for real? I couldn't believe it when I saw the mark, I had to keep checking to make sure it wasn't just a random number.

Maybe I feel bad because I'm worried that it actually was a mistake and they will take it back. I just checked again, and the mark was still 85. The good parts of the essay must have balanced out the less good parts, I suppose. I only did really well in one section of the essay, but I guess that I had to have lost 15% of the marks somewhere.

I hate how impersonal it is, getting your essay back through turnitin. They even have "G" and "Exc" next to bits of the essay, instead of comments that were more obviously written by a real person. Arrgh, I'm just going to send myself crazy over this. Think about it, only 16% of people got an HD, and I was one of them, even though I was going through extreme anxiety because of abilify. My high school physics teacher always told me that I could do so well if I just applied myself. Teachers always say that, but maybe he was right. Maybe I will go and apply myself to the next assignment.

Oh, the other good thing from the lecture today. I learnt that you should eat every couple of hours to reduce bingeing. If you don't eat regularly enough, if you let yourself get really hungry, you actually get more emotional, and those emotions can lead to a binge. I sort of knew that already, but I thought that 3 meals a day was enough. It does make sense, though. Something I read about treatment for bulimia involved getting the patient to gradually increase to eating 5 times a day! I think that doing this would really help me overcome my guilt towards eating, as well.