Suspended from Uni for owing tuition
Hi everyone,
My name is Macarena and I have been accepted into King’s College London to pursue a Master of Science degree in Early Intervention in Psychosis.
Unfortunately, the more I run the numbers, the farther away I’m getting of fulfilling this dream. I believe that everyone should have access to mental health resources, and any reading or studying I do is with the sole purpose of helping my future patients. My goal is to work with children with special needs, who are institutionalized, refugees, immigrants, and/or of low income areas.
What the Programme Costs:
- tuition: £31,350
- living expenses: £1,250 a month (according to KCL’s website) from september 2021 to august 2022 = £15,000 for the year
- visa: £348 + £470 for health insurance needed to apply for visa = £818
Total: £47,168
what I’ve spent so far on application and documents fees so far: £700+
Link to the Master's I was accepted:
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/taught-courses/early-intervention-in-psychosis-msc
link to my linkedin profile so you can see my education history:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/macarena-rom%C3%A1n-mbpsp-b0983b213/
Here’s a letter I wrote with a little history:
“Be the person you needed when you were younger” - Ayesha Siddiqi
To whom it may concern,
My name is Macarena Román and I am interested in pursuing further studies in Clinical Psychology to broaden and strengthen my knowledge and capabilities as a future Clinical Psychologist.
From August of 2020 to January 2021 I completed my supervised practicum as a Child and Adolescent Clinical Psychologist in the Mental Health Unit of Red UC Christus in the Pontifical Catholic University, Chile. In contrast to previous years, we were faced with the difficulties of working through a global pandemic, and finding new ways of working with children and adolescents via telepsychology, an approach that had been uncommon when working with minors previous to March 2020.
The practicum consisted of six months of rotations in different areas of the Mental Health Unit, and supervised clinical practice, where we introduced our cases during both group and individual meetings to evaluate possible interventions and treatment approaches for each patient. There were eight rotations in total, seven of which lasted 8 weeks each, and one that lasted the 6 months of practicum. The 8 weeks rotations - Child Group Therapy, Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Unit, Child and Adolescent Repair Program, Neuropsychology in CEDETi UC, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Liaison Psychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine Unit (for Adults), and Adult Psychotherapy - included reading and learning about each specific area, looking or reading about different cases and applying learned knowledge to each case, and clinical meetings. Lastly, we attended and participated in the clinical meetings for the Perinatal Mental Health Program for the duration of the practicum.
My interest in Psychology began when I was quite young, influenced by both of my parents who are Special Education teachers, who instilled in me the importance of providing help to those who tend to be excluded in our society. As I got older, I discovered that the criterion by which our society excludes surpasses what is physical and seen, and goes into what is not understood and often not talked about, our psyche. Once a teenager, I began volunteering in Summer School to help younger kids with math and english. In High School, I joined the Psychology club and once a year we would go to St. Elizabeth’s Psychiatric Hospital in Washington, D.C. to throw a Holiday party for some of the patients. And during my senior year of high school, I did an internship in the nearby elementary school, where I worked with a second grade teacher and helped out with the children who were behind in different subjects, but also, and the main reason I asked for this internship, was to provide support to an eight year old girl, by helping to minimize her social anxiety and integration problems in her educational environment. Entering university, I became involved with the student government organization for Psychology, where I was in charge of the Election Qualifying Court for three years, and Coordinator of the Office of Gender and Sexuality of Psychology during the 2012 academic year. In 2018, I was a teacher’s assistant in a Basic Psychological Processes course taught in my university, where I helped create and grade the weekly quizzes and tests.
In terms of my studies, I strive to continuously learn and grow as a future psychologist, and the pandemic has given me the chance to take courses online in different places without having to leave my home. During the past year I completed a course in Mentalizing and Mentalization Based Treatments with Children, Young People and Families (MBT CYP) – An Introduction at the Anna Freud Centre in London; a Child Protection: Children's Rights in Theory and Practice course by HarvardX (Harvard University Online); and a class on Trauma, dissociation, and disorganized attachment taught by América por la Infancia.
I am a firm believer of trying and that, whether we fail or succeed, we always learn by trying. My experience so far, especially during my clinical practicum, has taught me the importance of supervision, working with other people, and being able to recognize and identify what happens to me with each patient, and the more we work on ourselves, the better psychologist we will become.
