Noël Payne, Software Marketing Specialist
Alma maters: Irvine Valley College and University of California, Los Angeles
Wondering whether to pursue a bachelor’s degree in psychology? Meet 13 graduates who landed great jobs thanks to their psychology degrees.
What attracted you to psychology?
I applied to colleges as a kinesiology major because I thought I wanted to be a physical therapist. I had just completed a stint in physical therapy for my knee, was 17, and picked what I thought would make a cool job. Due to some family challenges, my path was redirected from a four-year university to community college.
During my first semester at Irvine Valley College (IVC), I was not happy to be there. I begrudgingly took intro psychology, biology, and calculus. After my first day of class, I started to fall in love with my psychology class and the psychology field. Suddenly, I was thinking differently about the people and difficult situations going on in my life, and everything started to make more sense. I was so excited to go to class and knew I had found my passion. I switched my major to psychology that semester, took advantage of all the opportunities at IVC, and ended up loving my community college experience.
What was it like to study psychology at a community college?
I had the most amazing experience at IVC. I went in super skeptical because going to a community college was not in my plan, but I vowed to maximize my time with the goal of transferring to UCLA. I was in the honors program at IVC and loved the tight-knit community of like-minded individuals. Our work wasn’t busy work—it was collaboration and critical thinking. I loved each of the honors classes with the small class sizes and the familiar people. I developed such strong relationships with my professors, and the proximity challenged me and helped me grow significantly. Besides the psychology classes, my Writing I and Writing II classes and professors I enjoyed, as well as my American History class. They were all phenomenal and taught in different, more untraditional ways—no textbooks!
My intro psych professor became my mentor and encouraged me to join Psi Beta, the psychology honor society on campus. It was a perfect fit as a psychology major. I became very involved with the club and with research and took every opportunity to make myself a better candidate for UCLA. I formed a family with the other Psi Beta members, and I became the president of Psi Beta the following year. The professors helped guide me through my education, research, and even my personal life. By the time I left IVC, I had presented at six conferences and had two abstracts published. I had won awards, and our Psi Beta chapter won the “Chapter of the Year.” I found my place at IVC and felt like I belonged the most I ever have in my life.
What was your experience at UCLA?
I then accomplished my goal of transferring to UCLA as a psychology major. UCLA has one of the top psychology programs in the nation, so I was very excited about the classes and psychology professors I could meet. I again used mentors (students, professors, and staff) to help guide me and teach me about UCLA quickly—how to meet people, where to go for dinner, how to get around, what classes to take, what clubs to join, etc.
Psi Beta prepared me so well for UCLA. As a UC and R1 university, the full-time professors at UCLA focus most of their time on research. Because I had written APA papers several times at IVC, I was very familiar with the research. I found that most other students, especially students that had been at UCLA all four years, did not have prior research experience, so I had a leg up. Through connections with people from Psi Beta, I joined a research lab before I even started at UCLA. I knew that being in a research lab was how I was going to make the most of my experience at UCLA, how I was going to get the best letters of recommendation, and how I would get into graduate school if I chose. I went to class, almost always went to office hours, and went into UCLA with the mentality of an underdog. It served me very well. I didn’t find that UCLA was more difficult than IVC; I just found that it was more pressure and there were more temptations. I worked smarter, not harder. I learned how to take tests rather than trying to absorb every piece of information on the fast quarter system.
I went to office hours all the time. The professors didn’t have very many visitors and spent a lot of time with me. I knew a lot of test answers from attending office hours. I either gained a deeper understanding of the material or got to know the professors on a more personal level. Going to office hours is how I got acquainted with my UCLA mentor. In office hours, we were getting to know each other, and I shared the research I did at IVC. She said she wanted to work with me and publish a paper on that topic. So, I applied for departmental honors and spent my last year at UCLA working with her on an honors thesis. I also worked for her as her assistant—I still am working for her, remotely.
UCLA presented another level of opportunity because of the people it attracted. Some of my professors did such interesting things professionally. I enjoyed my class on reality TV taught by a producer with his own company and my screenwriting class taught by a Pixar story consultant. I loved my developmental psychology class and my social psychology class because I learned so many things that I could apply in my own life. Aside from the great classes, the list of experiences that I had solely because I went to school at UCLA is massive. I took advantage of every opportunity I could, which made for unforgettable experiences at both colleges.
How did you prepare you for your career while navigating school?
I took a psychology class at IVC on all the different career paths in psychology. That helped open my eyes to all the possibilities. I made sure that I knew about and could conduct research because everything in life is based on research—look at all the materials around you. I made sure that I was comfortable with public speaking. I never said no to an opportunity and went to every career talk I could.
I started freaking out about what I wanted to do halfway through my senior year. People were applying to grad school, and it’s not that I didn’t want to go to grad school, I didn’t know what I wanted to focus on. I have always been good at so many things in my life, but I had never had a particular hobby I loved, sport I was great at, or focused heavily on one particular thing. I started going to the UCLA career center and meeting weekly with one of their counselors. We went through different exercises to establish what was important to me in a career and narrow down my choices. We did some personality and interest tests, which were very psychology related. However, there wasn’t any glaring answer about what I should do with my life. I graduated and sat on the results of my career counseling for a while. I looked back, and it told me a lot of what I already knew: I could be a teacher because I loved kids, I could be an accountant because I was good at math, etc. I think the exercises themselves were more important than the outcome. I knew I wanted a 9–5 kind of job because I had worked through school coordinating events and waiting tables during many of my evenings and weekends. I wanted to have a set schedule and a job that was a little creative. I also wanted autonomy yet guidance.
I dreamed of working for Google or Apple and, lucky enough, one of my professors I was doing research with knew someone at Google. I went for an informational interview. I loved it there for the technology company vibe—the gym, outdoor areas, free food, and the way they take care of their employees. What I didn’t like was that the woman created many of her own projects for her job. I knew I wasn’t comfortable with that kind of freedom and autonomy coming fresh out of school and knew that I wanted to have more guidance to learn as much as I could in my first professional job. So, I put the pieces together that I had learned over those couple of months, and determined that I wanted to work in marketing for a technology company that had more structure.