Hi there, Miami, after reading all your posts -- and others' replies to you -- I think I might understand where you're coming from and hope that I can help a little by offering you a slightly different type of response. Here's the impression I get: you are worried about what your life will be like when undergrad ends and suddenly you find yourself in the same town, but without your friends or the structure that school provides. The end of college is a stressful and scary time for a lot of people – you’re not alone in feeling like you need to find some way – any way – to escape the bleak and uncertain future you seem to be facing in the “real world.”
Because being a student is what you’ve known/what your life has centered on up to this point, going to grad school feels like the easiest way to avoid being stuck in your hometown with no friends and nothing to do. The general concept of being-in-school is familiar to you and, from your perspective, grad school is a logical extension of what you’ve been doing since Kindergarten (that is, being in school). It’s hard to think of other options because you don’t have any sense of what they actually are. You know that other people with psych degrees go to MA or PhD/PsyD programs, but you don’t know what else psych majors do after undergrad. You’re anxious about what your life will look like after graduation, and the thought of grad school (uniquely) relieves that anxiety. As a result, grad school has become a do-or-die proposition in your mind. It feels like your only hope. Does all this seem about right?
The problem is, as many others have pointed out, you do not seem anywhere near ready for a PhD/PsyD program. Because you are so clueless about what grad school actually is, I doubt you would be accepted to any reputable program. Even if you were, there’s no way you’d benefit from being there – you’re just not ready. Grad school is a serious commitment and you won’t like it unless you’re prepared to work very, very hard. Forget about grad school for now. Here's the good news: you do not need to go to grad school to avoid being in that stuck-here, no-friends, nothing-to-do scenario you so fear. There are many other options that are so much better for you at this stage (which is not to say that you will never be ready for/able to get into grad school – you very well may, if you ultimately decide that’s what you want, but not without quite a bit of hard work and careful planning). For now, find a job in one of those “mega cities” you want to live in. If you can find a job that seems reasonably interesting to you, great, but really what you need is an income that will enable you to get by and enjoy a change of scenery. Remember that a PhD stipend is not a lot of money, so unless you can’t find anything above $20-25 thousand/year, you’ll be living larger than you would as a PhD student (and much larger than you would in an unfunded PsyD program, which would not only pay you nothing but would also sink you into a pile of debt).
A lot of people don’t have their life plan figured out when they graduate from college. You have plenty of time to work on the longterm future; for now, it seems like you need general life experience (outside of school) more than anything else. Give yourself a chance to mature, have some fun experiencing life in a “mega city” while you’re at it, and try to learn about various career paths you might want to pursue. Try not to worry that you’ll “fall behind” if you don’t get started on your ultimate career path right away; cheesy though it may be, the whole “life is a marathon, not a sprint” cliché is true.
Also, just want to clarify something for you: you misunderstood what a grant is – it’s not something you “take out” (that’s a loan). A grant is something that established researchers (people who already have advanced degrees) may be awarded based on their research proposals. You can’t get your own grant right now. The suggestion was that you see if one of your professors knows of any colleagues who might hire you as a research assistant (anyone in a position to pay you for RA work most likely has a grant that they use to fund their research).
Finally, life has a way of working itself out in the long run - you’ll be OK. Get yourself a job in one of those warm weather mega cities and go from there. Best of luck!
