This is the first week of a six-week Q&A series.  I asked all of you to submit your questions about grad school.  Have you submitted your question yet?

What do YOU want to know about grad school?

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The lovely Doniree asked:

When you’re done (with the Master’s), will you continue on in a PhD program, or will you launch right into work?

Yes, I plan to go on to get a PhD in Human Factors or a related field (e.g., Applied Experimental Psychology or Applied Cognitive Psychology).

It is beneficial to first earn a PhD before trying to find a job in this particular field.  Most people who are Human Factors psychologists work in academia, but it is also important to be competitive if you want to work in Industry.

At the PhD level, it becomes all about matching student research interests and experience with specific faculty members in a program.  Only a select number of applicants will enter a Human Factors program each year because PhD students generally have their tuition waived and earn a stipend each semester for teaching or assisting with research.  Schools only want to fund people who they know will be a good match with the school because it is truly an investment on their part. Faculty members want to work with students who will help them with their own research, who have a good work ethic and who have past research experience.

In December, I wrote personal statements, filled out applications, requested letters of recommendation and applied to four PhD programs in Human Factors Psychology.  I would prefer to stay at my school because I am familiar with the faculty, have already completed the Master’s requirements, have a stellar Internship, love my new friends and love where I live.  It is rarely wise to only apply to one program when it is in a competitive field.  Human Factors programs only accept a handful of students each year.

I would continue to work in the REACTS (Research Environment for Alarms and Complex Task Simulation) lab if I stayed at Old Dominion University. If I didn’t stay here, I’d like to work with faculty in a number of other programs around the US.

I am interested in multiple types of research: Automation and robotics, simulation and video games for training, and teams.  So, yes, I am interested in distributed simulation training, team performance in computer game-based architectures, and individual learning with video games.  I am also interested in human factors related issues in unmanned/autonomous systems. I completed research to investigate how task difficulty impacts team performance and emergent leadership in a modified version of Half Life 2.  I am in the process of submitting that research to the National Human Factors and Ergonomics Society conference.  My Master’s Thesis is a second phase of my previous research.  I have improved my voice chat content coding measures of emergent leadership and found a “hole” in the literature.  I will investigate if role assignment (or the type of information one has during a task) predicts leadership emergence above and beyond personality, sex, and gaming experience in a computer game based architecture.

My ultimate career goal is to work in Industry, specifically the military.  Right now I have an Internship with the Navy.  It has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life because it has helped me focus my interests and understand better what I want to do with my life.  I love to do research, but I want to see science and knowledge in ACTION. I am an applied girl, as I like to say.  I like to play outside the lab and get my hands dirty.  I want to improve people’s lives more directly than conducting experiments and being published and teaching.  Without the professors and academics and without the labs, we would know nothing about the human brain or human abilities and capabilities in the context of a larger system.  I admire those people, but I don’t want to be those people.  I don’t mind doing work that people do not notice because, at the end of the day, I know what I am doing is meaningful.

But in the meantime, I will continue to do research in my lab, take courses, finish my Thesis, and work for the Navy… and hope that I get into one of those PhD programs I mentioned above…. so I can take more courses, go to more professional conferences, write a Dissertation, and take qualification exams.  I must really love what I do.  Sheesh. 

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Matt asked three questions:

1.  What classes are you actually looking forward to?

I really enjoy one of the classes I am taking this semester: Sensation and Perception.

I love this course for two reasons.  First, sensation and perception are are the foundations of EVERYTHING.  Sensing and perceiving form the foundation of our reality.  The sensory systems are the brain’s contact with the external world.  The sensory systems exist to supply the brain with information about the external world and we assign meaning to that filtered information through perception.  Life, as we know it, could not exist without perception. The second reason I love this course has to do with the split between psychology and philosophy.  I have never been interested in studying philosophy to the extent I wanted to study psychology.  At one point in history¸ philosophy and psychology were one in the same; but as scientists learned more about the human brain, psychology and philosophy became two separate disciplines.

Consider this question: Does a physical world exist independent of our ability to experience it?

Philosophers have been pondering this question for eternity.  It is a valid, important question and I hope philosophers and theologians continue to explore it.  Psychologists are not interested in this question because if the brain is not there to take sensory information and perceive it, it is not there.

Deep enough for you yet?

Let’s try again.

Mary’s room is a philosophical thought experiment:

• “Mary lives in the future where scientists know everything about physical processes and the brain. Mary’s specialty is neurophysiology and color. She knows everything about the eye, color perception, light, colored objects, etc. However, Mary has been raised in a black and white room her entire life. One day Mary is let out of her room and sees colors for the first time.”  Imagine Dorothy landing in Oz.
• Will Mary be surprised?  Will Mary understand what she sees?

Philosophers like Dennett, Lewis, Perkins and Wright have answered this problem in a number of interesting ways. But the psychologist’s answer would be this: Trying to convey what color is to someone who cannot see it is impossible because without the subjective experience of color, you cannot completely understand it.  Don’t believe me? Try to describe the color red to me knowing that I have never seen the color red before. You just can’t.  I might be able to understand the science behind the color red, but I cannot completely understand it without seeing it.

2.  Which classes have been a pain in the butt?

Exhibit A: Analysis of Variance (ANOVA): Research Methods and Experimental Design

The first day of class our professor told us to get used to the fact that we were all the smart kids in undergrad.  He said grad school was going to be a wake up call and for us to not be surprised when we did less than stellar on our first exam.  Low and behold, there was a bimodal distribution of grades on that first exam: half the class did well and the other half failed.  I think I cried over that class more than any other so far in grad school.  But I made it through alive… and with a B.

Exhibit B: Multiple Regression and Correlation (MRC): Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences

We had something called “Random Student” in this class.  It was a computer program with all of our names in it.  When the professor asked a question, he would press “Select” and the program would randomly generate one of our names.  It caused a lot of sweating, stomach aches, panic attacks and red cheeks between 4pm and 5:30 on Mondays and Wednesdays every week.  Enough said.

3.  How did you get into Human Factors?

Completely by accident, actually.

I wanted to get my Master’s because I had been out of school for a few years.  I needed to get my feet wet before launching into a PhD program.  I also was not PhD material yet because my GRE scores were seriously lacking.  After working in a management position, I knew I wanted to pursue Industrial/Organizational (I/O) Psychology.

So I applied to Applied Experimental Psychology Master’s programs at schools with good I/O programs in the hopes of eventually moving on into that field.  I landed at Old Dominion with an advisor who does Human Factors (HF) and I/O research.  Over time, I discovered that Human Factors had a warm place in my heart and I chose to go over to the “Dark Side” last semester.

My Internship in Human Factors SEALED THE DEAL.

I will still be able to do I/O research because Human Factors lends itself well to cross-pollination.  I/O and HF are really two sides on one coin…. Or three sides of one triangle since I/O is already a two-headed coin in and of itself.

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These questions are great because they help me explain how grad school:

• helped me see things in a way that I never expected I would see things.  Just when I thought I knew something, grad school made me realize I know NOTHING.
• opened doors that would not have opened for me otherwise.  Without my mentors, advisors, research experience, and knowledge, I would not be where I am today.
• challenged me in ways that my undergraduate education and my jobs never challenged me.
• introduced me to Human Factors.  If I had continued in a career in the Health and Beauty Industry as a spa manager or Esthetician, I would never have lived up to my full potential as a student, a scientist, or a human being.

I have stumbled, tripped, fallen flat on my face, failed a few exams, wanted to give up… but that is how I learned who I was and what I was made of.  I would not have discovered all of that as quickly without this path.