What is a typical day like for a first year Clinical Psychology PhD student?
I'm looking forward to starting work on my PhD this fall! I wonder if there are any current grad students out there who can give me an idea what an average day and/or week will be like? How much work will there be? What are class schedules like? Thanks!
I'd imagine a lot of it will vary from program to program. In our department, as we start seeing clients/patients almost from day one, the class load is typically a little lighter than at other schools--the average doctoral student here takes 2-3 classes/semester, with classes generally being finished by partway through third year.
This basically equates to 6-9 hours of in-class time per week, with up to twice that much time spent outside of class on related activities (primarily reading).
We have 2-3 hours per week of practicum-based supervision on average, with practicum meetings occurring once weekly.
Practicum caseloads seem to vary widely depending on the person; if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say the average is probably ~4-6 cases per student. For us neuropsychers, we average 1-2 full evaluations per week (barring no-shows, of course).
20 hours/week, give or take, is spent on your funding duties. If those duties are TA based, that includes grading and filing assignments, preparing tests, etc. For research-based assistantships, as you can imagine, it entails running participants, preparing manuscripts, and the like. For clinical assistantships, you just tack on more clients/evaluations.
All in all, the average "work week" probably hovers between 40 and 60 hours. Some people keep a fairly regular, 8-6 kind of schedule. Others set appointments all over the place, hammer out manuscripts at 3am and/or on weekends, and all sorts of other interesting stuff.
In your case, I'd imagine a large chunk of your time your first year will be spent on classwork and funding-related duties. The remainder will probably be devoted to practicum and familiarizing yourself with various clinical techniques, assessments, treatments, etc, as well as getting your feet wet research-wise.
