Senior Year Begins

Hello again!

Or, "We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story", as one of my friends is fond of saying. 

I'm very excited to continue my blog this year! I look forward to relaying my experiences at Clark as a Psychology major with a concentration in Jewish Studies, as a senior, on the verge of graduation! I'm beginning to discover how I will be able to merge my university studies with potential career options following graduation, and I hope, through this blog, to paint an accurate portrayal of how Clark has prepared me for what will come next in life.

So you may ask: what are my plans for Clark this year?

They're very exciting! I'm taking four classes: my capstone for psychology, called Advanced Topics in Social Psychology; a Jewish studies/sociology course called American Jewish Life; a Jewish studies course called Reading the Narratives of the Hebrew Bible (those who followed this blog last year may recall that I took the second piece of this course previously); and a COPACE course (through the Adult/Continuing Education program), a class titled The Final Chapter: A Study in Death and Dying.

Additionally, I am maintaining my position as a co-president of the Clark University Film Society (CUFS), and I will be preparing play-lists and hosting a radio show with a couple friends as a part of ROCU, Radio of Clark University. As the year progresses, I may join a few more clubs (Clark has so many to choose from!)

I will also be working as a student projectionist for the Screen Studies program here at Clark - I'll be in charge of setting up and projecting a number of screenings per week.

You may then be thinking: your senior year sounds great! But what's next? Are you going to stay at Clark and continue with the Fifth-Year Program?

My plans for the future are still uncertain - graduate school is a definite option, but my plans are not solidified to the point where I'd feel comfortable committing to Clark's excellent Fifth-Year program (check out Dylan's awesome science blog, which discusses what it's like to continue at Clark after undergrad, or this audio clip by a past student explaining why he decided to enter the Fifth-Year program).

If not Fifth-Year, then what are your plans?

I'm looking into careers where I may be able to combine the two topics I grew to love so much at Clark - psychology, and Jewish studies. Potential careers at this point include Jewish chaplaincy and hospice work; in my own experiences with illness and familial death, I have grown to appreciate how comforting the presence of such people can be during difficult times. And both positions would combine very nicely the topics I've studied here at Clark! For interested parties, here's a list of the smattering of courses that really pushed me to become interested in a career where I'd be lending kindness to the infirm: Suffering and Evil in Jewish Tradition, Holocaust: Agency and Action, Introduction to Peace Studies, Introduction to Abnormal Psychology, and Sociology of Families. I'm hoping that courses this semester (mainly A Study in Death & Dying and American Jewish Life, in addition to the Social Psychology capstone) will provide me with even more of a basis for the types of topics I’d uncover as a Jewish chaplain/hospice worker.

Clark truly is an institution that changes lives - without the availability and proximity of such enjoyable and interesting psychology & Jewish studies courses, I'm not certain I would have landed on a potential career choice that feels both accessible and exciting to me as an individual. 

This blog will follow my experiences at Clark throughout my senior year, with a focus on how my courses (and past courses) have prepared me for experiences after college. I'll keep you updated on events on campus, and will hopefully be posting relevant pictures, videos, and tweets (I've never used Twitter before, but I'll post links once I've set it up).

Thanks for reading so far - I look forward to keeping all of you updated!