JCU

Just returned from the James Cook University open house. They have one of the few graduate programs in clinical psych in the country, so I thought that they might be worth checking out. To pre-empt the people who are now like 'you idiot, you turned down one of the top five clinical psych PhD programs in the world for this??':

i) this is three times shorter
ii) which means that in terms of opportunity cost, it's cheaper
iii) and it gets to the heart of the matter, which is seeing patients, and lots of them.

Which, I guess, is what I want to do. Pretty pictures of the hippocampus are jolly, but I suppose it would be nice not to live on Maggi mee and microwaved broccoli for the rest of my life.

The JCU "campus" is in the SPRING building in Bukit Merah, which, as it turns out is also where Dorcas' workplace, the Dyslexia Assocation of Singapore, is. I didn't really expect to run into her on a Saturday afternoon, but lo and behold, she appeared as I was waiting for the 123, looking damp and rather bedraggled (it was drizzling). "You really shouldn't work so hard!" I said in greeting, but we hadn't gotten very far past the mutual 'what-are-you-doing-here's when my bus came and I had to go.

But I digress. The university occupies several floors - it still has that new-building smell, fresh paint and varnish, and the furniture is (as yet) unmarked by the grafitti of bored lecture-attending students. The guide made a big show of presenting the "facilities" (read: percolator and snack machine) in her sing-song English, and it was an age of going up- and downstairs before they finally cut to the chase and hauled out the lecturers to give their talks and answer questions. In the Psychology presentation it was mostly people looking for a B.A., NUS rejects no doubt, so that was another half-an-hour of irrelevancy, and when it finally came to Q&A most folks chose to cluster around poor Dr. Kylie instead of asking their bloody questions from the floor like they should have. Typical. There were only one or two others interested in the MPsych, and I was absolutely sympathetic to their wanting to see her personally since she didn't mention the program at all in her presentation. The rest of the morons, however, really needed to learn how to (a) listen so as not to end up asking for information that had already been given out, and (b) demonstrate some basic courtesy and not take up half-an-hour of a person's time when there are ten others waiting in line to see said person. In particular, there was this Indian fellow (by the way, I used much choicer words when I told this story to Jiahao just now, and am feeling seriously hampered by trying to keep this blog family-friendly) who must have been about 65 years old asking about getting a Bachelor's Degree. Oh, he says, I already have an MBA and an MEng. but blah blah blah fascinated with learning and blah blah blah and can I get advanced placement credits and shut the hell up already, we do only have so many years to live.

Because I chose not to join the line, I only got a very brief time at the end before the prof had to hurtle off to another presentation - which really goes to show that I should stop believing in the basic goodness of other Singaporeans (people?) already and just trample.

Anyway, I was impressed with 3 main things: first, that they have their own clinic where students get to practise, second (as I've said), that there's a heavy emphasis on actually seeing patients as opposed to coursework/research, and third, that they consider social and cultural norms when teaching treatment of pathologies, which I suppose is important.

Meanwhile, in the real world, I can't afford it (or, increasingly, as I go along, anything.)

Found the link