I guess the first thing that I have to say is that my biggest motivation to become a psychologist is my mom. You’re probably thinking that she has a psychological problem because of the way I worded the previous sentence. But the actual reason my mom is a motivation to become a psychologist is because she has a master’s in psychology. She first got me interested in psychology by talking to me about possible career paths I could take. She told me the field she was in, behavior analysis, was growing rapidly since a lot of kids were being diagnosed with autism and Asperger’s. I looked into colleges that offered good psychology programs and FSU was one of the strongest, so that also got me very interested in the school. As for a career path I am going to do 4 years in FSU and graduate with my Bachelor’s in Psychology and then do my Master’s online while I work in behavior analysis. But my inquisitiveness for psychology began before then.
I always looked up to my mom since I was little, partly because she was a single mother and because she worked hard. I had gone to work with her many times, she worked in a large company in Cuba and her job was as a psychologist for the company, making sure people that were hired were in good mental condition for the jobs. Growing up in Cuba there was a lot of poverty and sometimes violence in the streets; yet many people always strived to help each other as far as they could. I had a friend who I grew up with who lived on the same block as me and he was relatively poor, his parents had jobs but most of the time they could not make ends meet because the way the economic system is set up in the country. Yet people in Cuba are more “neighborly” than they are here and helped each other when in need. So it always brought up the question for me if people there helped each other when they were all poor, why wouldn’t people here with better economic standing help those in need. This question came up for me when I saw an article claiming that Sarasota, a city in Florida, about 20 miles from where I live, is the “meanest city in America”. This term was credited by newspaper after the city decided to criminalize the homeless population and even went as far as removing all public park benches so they would not sleep there. Keep in mind that Sarasota is one of the most economically developed cities in southwest Florida. And that is just an example of how people from two different economically developed countries behave differently in the same situation.
I understood this phenomenon in high school, during a psychology class. In it we reviewed many studies, one was a study led by Piliavin et al. called Subway Samaritans. In it the researchers wanted to learn if certain people, of different class, age and sex would or would not help someone in case of an emergency. The researchers set up people to fake an emergency by falling on the ground and pretending to be passed out inside a subway car in New York. The study concluded that a person of lower economic standing would help someone that had poor physical appearance (looked like a homeless person, as set up by the researchers), but that overall people would help regardless of appearance. So this answered my question; typically people always try to help those in need regardless of what they appear as expect when it depreciates their property value, like in Sarasota (yes that was an actual reason for why the city of Sarasota did not want any homeless people there).
As previously referenced in my senior year of high school I also had an AICE Psychology class. I took that class to see if I was any good at psychology and if I would want to get a degree in the field. I had straight A’s the whole year and I never got below a B in the tests. I even enjoyed everything we did in that class and all we learned from the different types of psychology to different studies that were performed on humans and even animals that helped breakthroughs in the understanding of people. To say the least that class really did a lot in my understanding and appreciation of the subject.
I guess another thing that made me want to be a psychologist was the fact that my biological father left me and my mom when I was only 2 months old. Growing up he was never there, he had a job on the other side of the country so I saw him maybe once a month for a couple of hours. As I grew up I began to think it’s my fault. Maybe there was something wrong with me that made him want to leave. As I got older I began to think about it from a more mature standpoint. For a child not to have a father figure, especially a boy it can be challenging since you do not always have that support a father offers his son. I still do not know why he left me, and every once in a while, he calls to know how I have been. I find this ironic because why should he care yet I always answer with the same, “ok”, because what else is there to say. On the other hand my stepdad has always been there and has always been very supportive. The relationship can be described by a basic psychological debate, nature vs. nurture. The debate argues that a child can either be predetermined to be a specific way (nature) or they can be taught to behave or act in a different way (nurture). Personally, I believe nurture is more powerful because I am in many ways like my stepdad, hardworking and dedicated, but I draw very little traits from my biological father.