Should I give up my hobby?

[PsyD2014]

---

Members don't see this ad.

I've been a realty agent for a few years now, doing the work on a part-time basis. It is a hobby of mine that I picked up a few years back. Just really enjoy buying/selling homes, working with people, and other aspects of being a realtor.

Is this something I will need to give up once I am a psychologist? I am going into my pre-doc internship and plan on being licensed soon after. Plan is to do private practice and teach. Obviously, I would not be selling houses to client's. My concern is about how I would be marketing myself, and also making sure that my realty clients are not connected to therapy clients. I have a realtor webpage, and eventually will have a private practice webpage - for some reason this feels weird being a psychologist/realtor...

Anyone else have experience with having a part-time gig that is completely different from being a therapist?

 

[bmedclinic]

Though it's a little different, I acted as a landlord during my graduate career. My DCT, knowing this, shared with me that she was the landlord for an apartment complex while she was in graduate school. Though these are very different than being a realtor, I think that so long as you avoid having dual relationships, you should be fine. I fully intend for my "retirement" to be owning a second business (my hobby is roasting fantastic coffee and I plan to parlay that into a coffee shop gig-- which will be ironic if I end up doing behavioral sleep medicine as my other gig). But I think doing things like this is fine as long as you make it very clear to people that you have two seperate jobs that you work at keeping seperate.

 

[PHD12]

I've been a realty agent for a few years now, doing the work on a part-time basis. It is a hobby of mine that I picked up a few years back. Just really enjoy buying/selling homes, working with people, and other aspects of being a realtor.

Is this something I will need to give up once I am a psychologist? I am going into my pre-doc internship and plan on being licensed soon after. Plan is to do private practice and teach. Obviously, I would not be selling houses to client's. My concern is about how I would be marketing myself, and also making sure that my realty clients are not connected to therapy clients. I have a realtor webpage, and eventually will have a private practice webpage - for some reason this feels weird being a psychologist/realtor...

Anyone else have experience with having a part-time gig that is completely different from being a therapist?

You will need another source of income while building your practice so I think being a real estate agent will come in handy. It can take up to two years to build your practice so this will be helpful to you. Just be careful of dual relationships.

 

[Doctor Eliza]

Don't have an answer for you, just have a funny story...

My husband has the same hobby of dabbling in real estate. He does very little of it and works with 1-2 buyers per year. Last year his friend at work referred his in-laws to my hubby. And perhaps you guessed it...they were former clients of mine!

The clients didn't realize that he was my husband because they had seen me under my maiden name before i got married. Of course, I could never indicate to hubby that I knew them. There were a few narrow misses of awkward situations. For example, once he was running late to show them a house, so he didn't have time to drop me off at home first. Hubby said, "oh come in and I'll introduce you and you can look around too." I made an excuse about needing to return some calls on my cell and so I needed to wait in the car and do that. The clients also kept making comments to hubby after they bought their house about inviting us for dinner. Fortunately that never materialized!

Dr. E

 

[JeyRo]

I'm not directly answering the OPs question, but it occurs to me that hobbies should be pleasurable and, you know, have at least the objective of making you happy, right?

So... http://finance.yahoo.com/news/2013-happiest-unhappiest-jobs-according-150500584.html

(check out the #1 "happiest job")

 

[Pragma]

I'm not directly answering the OPs question, but it occurs to me that hobbies should be pleasurable and, you know, have at least the objective of making you happy, right?

So... http://finance.yahoo.com/news/2013-happiest-unhappiest-jobs-according-150500584.html

(check out the #1 "happiest job")

I saw that too - had followed your link about lawyers before and checked out other jobs. Knowing some real estate agents - I have to say I can't see how it became #1. Any of these types of surveys have some methodology issues.

 

[JeyRo]

I saw that too - had followed your link about lawyers before and checked out other jobs. Knowing some real estate agents - I have to say I can't see how it became #1. Any of these types of surveys have some methodology issues.

I don't know - I think being a real estate agent probably sucked a few years ago, apparently that's changed - and this is just a survey intended to cover the previous year.

I guess I agree with you on your point about surveys, but it seems difficult to put together a survey that withstands all methodological concerns in most cases. Not saying it can't be done. This one had an N of 47,000 or something like that (obviously with probably enormous response biases and possibly other problems, but hey, they aren't trying to do a scientific survey).