I wish to switch from a clinical track of study in psychology to industrial/organizational. I have invested a great deal of reflection in this move, especially since my academic mentor, a clinical psychologist, stressed the importance of thinking the issue through clearly in light of all available options. I am currently a first-year graduate student at XXXX College studying towards a Master’s Degree in clinical psychology. For the reasons outlined below, I would like very much to transfer to your highly esteemed program to continue my studies towards the Master’s Degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, which is where my passion lies.
The main reason that triggered my decision of changing the major is my 10-month experience at a consulting company. It is an educational consulting company and I worked there as an English teacher. It was my very first time working as a full-time employee and also as a member of a large group. Frankly, I had no such experience before I started working there, so I had no sense of what it is like to work as an employee and as a member of a large group. I admit that 10 months is not a sufficient time to experience all the major issues that could arise in an organization, but I have seen many problems and stresses from it, which often hindered employees from performing at their best. The major problem in the organization I noticed was conflicts between co-workers and between an employee and his or her employer either externally or internally.
As a psychology student myself, I am well aware of how conflicts and stresses affect a person’s mental health and eventually their physical health. Such distress would further hamper one from behaving effectively in variety of settings, including workplace. From then on, I began to wonder what could be done better for an organization to success, and realized that it all begins at the beginning of recruitment and placement to mediation to worker’s motivation that affects performance and job satisfaction.
My central interest is conflict resolution in organizational settings because it strongly affects one’s work performance and also one’s mental health. To discover more about organizational psychology, I started out by buying books about human resources and listening to live experiences by people who work in human resource fields and consultants. My ultimate goal is to develop my skills in resolving conflicts in the work place and organizations to become more lucrative in long term. Moreover, I want to be able to ripen my knowledge on assisting employees to perform more effectively through appropriate human resource management.
I believe that with my fundamental knowledge on psychology, it is now time for me to shift my concentration and learn organizational psychology systematically, and with excellent curriculum XXXX College encompasses, I would be able to learn organizational psychology more deeply and ultimately able to contribute my knowledge into the workplace to make more efficient and successful environment in this ever changing competitive and demanding world. Without these tens of thousands of workers, who could run our society? I am convinced that it is us the psychologists to help achieve the goal of prosperous and successful society.
