Psych Is A STEM Major Too: My Experience Working In A UMass Psychology Lab

When I was accepted into UMass Amherst, I came in as an undecided major. I was thrown into the College of Humanities and Fine Arts and spent my first semester of freshman year taking mostly Gen-Eds. Second semester rolled around and I decided to take Psych 100 considering I loved my psychology class in high school. The day before we were sent home for spring break (…and Covid-19), I decided to declare psychology as my major with little knowledge of what was to come. 

I spent most of my “psychology career” at a little white desk in the bedroom of my parent’s home. I loved taking all of the classes offered by the psychology and brain sciences department. From abnormal to social psychology all the way to forensics, I’ve genuinely learned so much about the field and the reach it has in everyday life. 

It wasn’t until the spring semester of my junior year, the first full year back since Covid-19, that I realized the lab opportunities offered by the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. I had a lot of classes in Tobin and would always pass a bulletin board full of different RA postings (RA as in Research Assistant).  

I had taken a seminar class called “Child, Family, and Community” with Professor Maureen Perry-Jenkins and became obsessed with the topic of the class. It essentially focused on the ecological system of a person’s life and how the different levels within the model such as macrosystems, mesosystems, ecosystems, and microsystems all play huge roles in an individual’s life. It opened my eyes to so much more of the world that I had never taken the time to understand before. The class specifically focused on children and family dynamics and after learning that my teacher was the director of The Work and Family Transitions Lab at UMass I knew that my interest in working with children and families in the future would work well within the interests of the lab. 

The Work and Family Transitions Lab (WFTP) worked on a longitudinal study in the early 2000s that focused on new parents’ mental health before, during, and after transitions involving parenthood. They specifically looked for socio-cultural factors such as class, race, and ethnicity to better understand the transitions. While both studies have long been concluded there were still several interviews to go through and transcribe. I applied for the position of Research Assistant in the spring of 2022 after looking online at the psychology department’s web page. After two separate interviews, I received an email confirming I received the position at the end of April. 

I officially started my position in the fall of 2022, my senior year, and have learned so much since then. Unlike several other labs in the Psychology Department, the WFTP lab is smaller than the rest and feels a lot more tightly knit. I am able to work directly with my fellow RAs, several grad students, and Dr. Perry-Jenkins herself. I love the environment I’m in and our weekly lab meetings are always so informative, but I do have to do some work. Six hours a week to be exact. The hours depend on the amount of credits you choose for the course but normally it’s between six to nine hours a week. Here are some of my responsibilities. 

Up until last week, I’ve been transcribing family interviews. Each family has two sets of four phases of interviews over the course of a couple of months before birth up to a year after birth. Both mothers and fathers (or co-parents) were recorded during the interview and now I listen to those tape recordings on a very old cassette player and write down what they say. It’s quite tedious but it’s also incredibly interesting to hear these stories come alive. 

Aside from transcribing, I also code new interviews for a study that one of the lab’s grad students started and I enter the data into a system. Because of this new study, I get the opportunity to do outreach by going to libraries or schools to get parents to sign up! I’ve also gotten the chance to join an interview session. While I was more of a babysitter than anything else I loved listening to the questions being asked and the answers given.

I’m not a very math or science-heavy kind of person, but working in this lab has given me a new appreciation for psychology and why it belongs in STEM. Oftentimes when I call psychology a STEM major I’m usually goofing around because I never saw it on the same level as something like engineering or biology. It wasn’t until I started in the lab that I was given the chance to fully understand the extent to which psychology research uses math and science to understand different variables and their effects. 

I love my lab and I wouldn’t have wanted my experience to go any other way! I’ve gained a new appreciation for all the work that the Psychology Department at UMass does, and I hope to continue down this path and further my education even after graduation. 

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