PSA Q&A Session with Ben
What is the thing you miss/look forward to the most about being on campus?
Students’ responses:
- I miss walking on Campus
- In-person lectures
- The views
- Koerner’s Parties
Pre-COVID I was tracking 6,000 and 7,000 steps a day. I think the only time I’ve ever met the goal 10,000 steps was when I went travelling. Now that I’m not teaching on campus my steps have dropped down to like 400. Which is normal because where am I going to go in my house? I’m going to go from this seat to the bathroom. The good thing is I live down from the street from CoCo so whatever calories I burn from walking to CoCo I waste all that I’ve burned with the Coco itself.
I also really miss walking between classes. There was one time where I was scheduled to have a class in the Hennings building and immediately after that I had to rush over to CIRS. For those of you who have been in my class before, sometimes there is a small line of students asking me questions afterwards. That happens a lot and after I’ve answered the questions, I have 3 minutes to run to the other building, so I was really doing some workouts.
How many spoons did you break in the span of your 217 teaching career?
I started teaching PSYC 217 in 2013. It’s been 7 years since I’ve been teaching. Every year has been about 2 sections so I’m going to say about 13-14 spoons.
[Fun Fact: the UBC Fountain’s water features are only switched on during the ten minutes between classes and the height of the water tells you how much time you have to get to the next class]
Why did you choose Psychology when you were in University? How did you pick being a professor?
When I was in high school, people came to talk to me a lot about their issues. I have no idea why – I don’t know if I just have an approachable face or whatever, but they would. People would come to be about their relationship problems – I was basically a relationship counselor even though I was single throughout high school. But I thought this was something I was interested in in carrying over after high school to help people.
I got accepted into UBC forestry. And I wasn’t allowed to transfer until two years had passed.
So, when I got into Arts, I really had nothing else that I was interested in besides psychology. At the time I wanted to go into medicine and was thinking about psychiatry. And so, my original plan was to do psychology and then go into med school. But then I took O CHEM in second year and that course singlehandedly decided for me that I was not going into medicine. Psychology was my alternative track and at that time I was working in a Psych lab at UBC. And so, I went on with that.
Why did you become a prof?
Completely because of one person. There is a prof who still teaches in our department: Dr. Andrea Perrino. She currently teaches Sports Psych. During the summer before my 3rd year, I took my first Social Psych course. I took it with Dr. Perrino. I found her so engaging, so interesting, and I thought it was also cool that she was a triathlete. Throughout that course, she was very supportive of everyone. She was very kind too. She would take the time to sit down and go over my ideas with me. I was very appreciative of her dedication. So that really got me interested in doing Psychology after I graduated. After I left her course, I said to myself I wanted to do for another student what she did for me. And I know the only way I could do that was to go through grad school and teach at a similar capacity to her. As a grad student I TA’d every term I could have TA’d and was given the opportunity to teach.
When I first taught 217 in 2013. It was a terrifying first day for me. When you teach your first class, you’re very aware of everything because you don’t want to mess up – are they bored? Are they interested? Are they engaged or not? I was paying attention to the clock, to my presenter notes to keep up with the narrative I was weaving and what slides are coming up next. And trying to make sure I was telling the story I wanted to tell. And that was only syllabus day!
Someone asked me is this really what you want to do?
And then came my 4th day. And when I was watching people leave the class, it was a moment where I felt like I belonged. I felt comfortable in the class and I enjoyed the experience. I thought to myself this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. That’s why I kind of stuck with it through grad school and later on.
What is a piece of advice you would give to an undergrad going to grad school/getting through COVID?
Sleep. Just sleep up until the moment you have to turn on our laptop. Maximize the amount of time you sleep. If you’re thinking about grad school at all. I would really suggest exploring different kinds of research opportunities. Also remember no one says you have to do Psych research. You need to do research to go into grad school, but you’re completely welcome to do research in other schools. People don’t often realize right off the bat the value that these other fields contribute to people’s understanding of psychology and other humans in general. If you’re having difficulties finding a research position in Psychology, look broadly, in other faculties.
For example, Dr Joe Henrich was in the psych department, but his training was in Anthropology and Economics. Previously he was also some sort of rocket scientist. He had all these varied experiences, but he ended up in Psych. So this goes to show that it doesn’t hurt to have various experiences.
Plus, in general, I think it’s nice to have well rounded set of experiences.
How do we make prof relations to get research opportunities when all classes are online?
This is a question we’re trying to address within the department. People need research opportunities and other volunteer work. Otherwise we’re going to have a whole cohort of undergrad students with zero experience. Some people have talked about getting students to do lit reviews/helping to do meta analyses. There is some online work that can be done. Outside of that, establishing a relationship through emailing profs and telling them you’re interested in their work, whether it’s cold emailing lab directors/coordinators/managers to see if they’re recruiting or emailing your TA’s to see if they need any help.
Recently there was a reddit AMA and some of the other panelists on the AMA answered a few questions about how to approach profs as well. So you can look at that link – go on reddit, go on current AMA I think it is archived.
Top tips to get into Honor Psych:
That is all in the AMA. Dr. Hamlin – she has given a lot of information of the AMA site. So I would direct you to that site because she gives you some really good advice because she is in the Honors department.
https://www.reddit.com/user/UBCPsych/
What do you think is your fav psychology class and why?
Cultural psych. It’s a bit of a toss-up between cultural and social because of some topics in social. But cultural psych is one of the courses in which I get to rant about representation in psychology because it’s so pertinent to the subject of cultural psychology. I get to talk about its historical development and the development trajectory of cultural psychology, why it has been such a white dominant subject, and the role of racially marginalized people in the field. In a sense we needed cultural psych to break from that white euro dominant perspective of psychology.
I like to teach cultural psych because it’s a space where I get to talk about these issues and explore them. Because I think there is a self-selection of students who take cultural psychology so I think those students are more open to discussing these topics and have an inherent interest in them. And I think teaching cultural psychology has really clarified for me a lot of the problems inherent in cultural psychology as well.
I originally planned to go into forensic psych. But a few years ago the department phased out the forensic psych area.
How was the PhD process for you? How long did it take and how exhausting was it?
The answer is yes. I want to encourage everyone who wants to go to grad school to go to grad school but I gotta say it is tough. It is mentally straining; it is not a 9-5 job – it literally takes over your life. The work that you do is kind of like air, the work that you do can take up as much space as possible if you let it. No one knows what is good enough, no one knows where to stop. And that is why there are a lot of mental health issues present in grad school. But I really enjoyed my experience – what was great about grad school for me though was the connections that I made and the experiences I had. It is hard work and can be stressful for a lot of people, so you need a really great support network when you’re in grad school.
Funding is probably the biggest concern. So, you would want to manage the financial situation.
I will say what really helped me was taking a year off after undergrad. I graduated after 5 years then took a year off. It was more of just doing research – I worked at a bunch of labs at an enjoyable pace because I wasn’t doing any school and was working on my grad school application. Which was great as well because it gave me time to work on it and get all of my thoughts together. So I thought that year off was very helpful to me.
What do you think about just getting a master’s in psychology without a PhD?
I think it ultimately depends on what you plan to do. What kind of things do you want to do and how are you able to leverage what you learned for what you want to do”? You should think “will a masters be sufficient for what I want to do”? If you want to teach, a PhD will be necessary.
And you should consider other degrees besides psychology to accompany the degree. A Master of Public Health, for example, instead of a master’s in psychology may be worthwhile to study and apply to areas of psychology that are more relevant to your interests. It ultimately comes down to what you plan to do your master’s thesis on and what you’re working towards. What are you trying to accomplish in the end and can you apply what you do in your degree to what you want to do?
How did you feel about the GRE? Were you comfortable with the test?
I think the only thing that is useful on the GRE is probably the Math section if you’re applying to a quantitative area. I think the essay writing section is helpful, but people develop writing skills anyway and you can get samples of a person writing anyway without them having to take the GRE. Like if they send you their undergrad thesis or otherwise. I think there are other ways to assess these things without having to sit and write a test. But generally, I don’t like the GRE. There are a lot of criticisms of it – like the fact that it’s an advantage for people who can pay for prep classes, to be able to take the test multiple times and not be as stressed out.
But the question is, if you do away with the GRE, there are other ways in which privilege emerge. For example, reference letters. Only the people who can afford to not work will have research experience. Finding an alternative way to assess readiness for grad school and weighing personal circumstance against academic performance if those two things conflict with each other. All I can say is, more and more schools have done away with GRE’s as an admissions requirement. We’re exploring different options for providing different kinds of recognition who do work – if its unpaid, what alternative forms of compensations can there be. We are currently trying to solve this in the department.
How was your journey in getting into grad school?
I was quite lucky and quite privileged to be mentored by several fantastic grad students. When I was working in the forensic psych lab, the senior grad students were open to allowing me to explore areas of interest. Saying yes to those tasks helped me build more experience and helped me gain some more knowledge about research. Senior grad students were extremely helpful – they would help me go through so many drafts to make me a competitive candidate.
If you could conduct an experiment, no ethical boundaries or funding limitation at all, what would you conduct?
I would totally do a cross-racial, cross-cultural adoption studies. Where you take all the babies that are born in a year or certain time frame and randomly toss them into different time frames and different settings and see how different they are. This could address cultural similarity within US adoption studies which would help us address heritability issues. That is every cultural psych lover’s fantasy, but it is completely unethical.
Is there a way to stay in contact with you?
I do twitch streams now if you want to come and join in on the fun. Follow me on twitter. I have the same handle on all social media (twitter, twitch).
- tv/ubcdrbench
I would also be happy to answer you through email if you want to chat.
Please don’t subscribe to me and please don’t pay me to do my twitches because I feel like it is unethical to have my students to pay for me to stream. But you are welcome to follow me.