Hello, my name is Van. I'm a part of the Clinical Psychology PhD program with an emphasis in Health Psych. A day-to-day of a CSPP student would look like one day coming to campus and studying, taking the classes. And the next day going to practicum doing field work figuring out those modalities that you'd like to use.
And what's interesting about that is they actually start to blend into each other really. One day, you're learning something academically and then the next day, you might be immediately practicing it, or vice versa. You might learn something in your fieldwork that then the next day at school, you're like, "Oh, I talked about this during my practicum. Let's learn about the theory behind it."
My practicum site is currently at Sharp Pain Rehab with Dr. Laura. And throughout our sessions, we were able to build trust together. So there's this really important topic of the therapeutic alliance that you have with your, with your patients, your clients.
Somebody that has changed the course of my study, the course of my life is actually Dr. Richard Gevirtz. He is my Faculty Chair. He's helping me with my dissertation. He was my first supervisor at my first practicum site. He has been my teacher for a slew of many topics and he is just awesome in so many ways, but the way that he teaches the way that he supervises is really like, "Let's learn about the theory and understand why. And then you implement it. You learn why this is important."
