Diane : Hello, thanks for coming. Would you please briefly introduce yourself and tell me what’s your name, your age and your current degree ?
Mélanie : My name’s Melanie, I’m 36 years old, I’m married and I have two daughters. I’m in first year of developmental psychology master.
M : What about you ?
D : I’m Diane Destré-Couronné. I’m 42, I’m married and we have a 12 year-old son. I’m in second year of developmental psychology master.
M : Can you tell me about your previous professional life ? For instance, in what field did you work ?
D : My former career was about digital issues and innovation. When I was younger, after my first studies in sociology and anthropology, I decided to take a chance and I started my professional life by creating a startup, with my brother and the man who became my husband the same year. Our online business was about travel. Eventually I closed the company when I came back to university 4 years ago. In fact, I used to lead several activities at the same time. I used to network a lot with other CEOs (Chief Executive Officers) with which we created a professional cluster and a place to encourage meetings and coworking. I have been elected 3 times to the board of directors so I spent 6 years to develop links with politicians, medias, and professionals working about web and innovation. I also worked for institutions like Loire-Atlantique and I led their digital strategy for tourism. I have been a speaker at several events in France, I led some innovating projects. I have worked a lot as a digital project manager, in many ways and different types of structures including web agencies.
D : What about you ? What was your previous job or field ?
M : I’ve been a primary school teacher for twelve years. I’ve replaced other teachers for most of my career, so I’ve worked in many different schools, with pupils from three to twelve years old. I’ve also had the opportunity to work two years and a half as a specialized teacher in a secondary school, with disabled teenagers. Most of them had cognitive disorders like autism spectrum disorder, serious dyslexia, intellectual disability… Family problems or socio-economical problems often made things worse for these pupils. My job was to coordinate their inclusion into several classes of the school and to help them to learn.
M : Why did you want to study psychology, and especially why did you choose developmental psychology? Considering your previous career, you could have chosen social psychology for example…
D : I’m still passionated by my previous job but my personal life made me curious about psychology, in particular with gifted people. My husband and I have made our son tested when he was 6, and he’s highly gifted. I experienced the links with school and teachers when it comes to talk about gifted children and I thought it was worth to work on it. I’d like to fight against stereotypes about gifted people. In fact, I found it difficult to chose only one field because I feel very concerned by clinical and cognitive psychology for example. As you’ve just suggested, I also like social psychology ! Thanks to both my early studies and my current ones, I’m beginning to get a complete picture of the humanities in general, and I like it very much. Besides, I am convinced of the lifespan perspective of developmental psychology, so I’m interested in all age groups.
D : Can you tell me about your professional project ? What are the types of structure and population you would like to work with ? Do you want to practice independently or in an institution ? Why ?
M : I’m convinced that children are fine as long as their parents are fine too, except for some special situations like disability or physical health concerns. My personal parenthood experience wasn’t easy at all and I’d like to help parents and children to handle this great challenge. I strongly believe in prevention to promote parenthood. I think a parent is never completely ready when he or she becomes a parent for the first time. I remember some things I’ve been said when my eldest daughter was a newborn, things that really helped me sometimes, but also unsettled me some other times… New parents sometimes are swamped with recommandation, everybody has an opinion about how to take care of a baby. When you’re just beginning, you can feel overwhelmed, vulnerable, easily swayed, you can lack of self-confidence. Parents get too many advice, and not always those they’d really need. Especially looking back, I think that parents in the making need everything except some all inclusive recipes like “let him/her cry”, etc. They need to be reassured in their abilities to be good parents and to be helped in knowing and understanding their child’s needs. I don’t know yet in which context I’ll want to practice. It can either be with associations, in some public institutions or as a private psychologist.
D : Can you explain to me the subject you’re working on this year ?
M : My research project is in relation to my internship in a foster care household. I work with children in the children’s care home and with mothers in the maternal center. For my master’s thesis I’m working on the effects of maltreatment on children’s development (emotional regulation, etc.). It’s a vast topic and I’m not sure yet what field of development I will explore, it will depend on my readings…
D : What other areas of psychology are you fond of ?
M : Well, I think that psychology is interesting in every facet of life, and that everyone is concerned. I like the universal dimension of psychology, but what I like the most is the individual facet. I find social psychology interesting in that it can help us understand the way societies work, but sometimes I think it generalizes some behaviors without taking interindividual differences into account. For me it’s the microsocial and systemic point of view that speaks to me the most. Cognitive psychology is very enlightening but it’s a bit too technical for me. Likewise, psychopathology concerns specific situations of disease, yet I mostly like to think about ordinary life stories. The main themes that I’m fond of are emotional regulation, systemic theories, attachment theory and more generally everything around parenthood and family.
D : To what extent do you consider your experience to be an advantage in becoming a psychologist?
M : Many people had the same reaction with me as a mature student. I’ve often been said that I was probably better equiped to become a good psychologist than younger students who don’t have as much life experience as me. Considering the complexity of human psychology I believe that the longer you’ve lived, the more you’ve met people, heard stories, shared moments and thought about what binds all of this and the more you have references in mind when you learn the theory. I think younger people are totally able to assimilate the theory but it takes more learning efforts for them because they don’t have as many examples from everyday life to illustrate the concepts.
M : How did your first year of Master go ? Has the public health crisis affect your studies, your research project ?
D : At first, I found studying more comfortable than previous years because we had passed the selection. But finally, last year was pretty short and difficult. Indeed, because of the Covid, my husband, my son and I were at home. My son’s teachers gave a lot of homework. My son didn’t encounter any difficulty with the lessons, but work planification was a problem. We had to organize his schedule, taking in account online learning, group work, and each teacher used his or her own online tools which wasn’t very easy. But progressively, the everyday life became better and better. The major difficulty I encountered concerning my studies was the lack of an available desk ! At home, we have a room which is dedicated to the office. I usually use it but then, my husband worked at home and really needed to be able to work without disturbing. So I was often interrupted when I worked in the living-room. The research digest was long and difficult, and we couldn’t collect any data. Moreover, some courses are made to be attended in real life more than online like training to psychological interview. Luckily, with my classmates, we stood together, which made the end of the year easier.
M : What do these lessons bring to your everyday life ?
D : To be honest, it doesn’t make that much of difference. In fact, very early in my life, when I was about 10 or 12, I started to make a lot of introspection by myself, and now I’m about to graduate as a psychologist, I understand I really and deeply did the psychologist work on myself. People generally feel very at ease to talk to me. I guess it comes from the fact that I never judge people, I’m not afraid to talk about any subject, I’ve got no taboo, I and I like listen to the others. I owe a lot to others because in my opinion, listen to the others made me live hundreds lives in the same time ! I mean, by hearing other’s experiences and how they lived them through, I detected some human patterns of thinking and reacting. I learnt so much about the human mind from people who confided to me ! It goes without saying that there is a big difference between help others in private life and being a professional psychologist. My studies helped me to name and master concepts that I already knew. It’s very helpful to know some scientific references, it makes the difference between inference and knowledge. So now, I feel almost ready to practice. In my everyday life, psychology studies allowed me to be aware of my parental style, to be very conscious about our educational choices for example. Even, sometimes, while I listen to my son who tells me about his early-adolescent life, I can’t prevent myself from analyzing what he’s saying, and then I try to stop and tell to myself “just be his mother” !
M : Which advice would you give to a second-year master student-to-be ?
D : I don’t know if my advice could be useful, but firstly I would say that the earlier you find your internship, the better it is ! Once this concern is set aside, you’ll be able to focus on current learning. Secondly, as far as I am concerned, I think this year is the most personal one. I mean, from my point of view, it’s time to imagine your future professional life, lead intense thinking about what kind of psychologist you want to become, in a concrete way. For instance, I’d like to work with gifted children, and there’s a debate among psychologists to know if IQ must be communicated or not to the patient. So I have to decide what I think about that point, and I’d better be ready to tell my future patients what are my own arguments, which will be back up by scientific research.