A conversation with myself in the waiting space There’s a moment after submitting a clinical doctorate application where everything goes still. Not calm, exactly - more like suspended. You’re not doing anything, but you’re also doing everything. You’re waiting. You’re hoping. You’re imagining. You’re trying not to imagine. And in that strange in‑between, you realise just how much of the preparation for this journey has been happening quietly, long before you ever clicked “sub

Applying for the DClinPsy for the second year in a row was a very different experience from the first, and I was surprised by just how much had shifted in me over the past twelve months. Last year, everything felt raw, high‑stakes, and slightly overwhelming. I remember sitting at my laptop late into the night, rereading every sentence as if the entire trajectory of my life depended on the placement of a comma. I was driven, yes, but I was also anxious in a way that felt consu

I didn’t set out to become a psychologist. My early life was shaped more by survival than ambition - juggling school, a part-time job, and long commutes just to make it to class. I landed in banking, a career that offered stability but never quite satisfied my curiosity about the human mind. That curiosity began in childhood. I’m ambidextrous, but I naturally wrote with my left hand. At a family gathering, my aunt - who lived with schizophrenia - pointed at me and screamed th