Finding a different path with Sport Psychology
Hello everyone and welcome to our next blog post.
Today we have the pleasure of reading about Bronwyn Edwards, and her journey studying Sport and Exercise Psychology. Bronwyn's journey has not been a typical one, and as such is valuable food for thought. She highlights how experiences influenced and help form her career path, and how she had found inspiration through networks linked to the Olympics, and a love for research and public health, along the way.
Bronwyn Edwards
You can follow me on LinkedIn or message me with any questions: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bronwyn-edwards-a34317216/.
A Different Path with Sport Psychology
Growing up Sport Psychology was not a thing I ever thought of or even knew about. It was something that would be hinted at during my gymnastics career, but never explicitly mentioned or talked about. My gymnastics coach explained to me one day that “gymnastics is 90% mental”, and whilst this made some sense to me at the time, nothing was ever done to help develop that 90% of my training. I then started coaching gymnastics myself, and after a year or so was assigned a group of young gymnasts who had all moved from a different club to our club, quite unusual. But even more unusual was they all had a fear of the beam. How do you get 8 young gymnasts to get over a fear of falling and hurting themselves? This was when I really started to understand what my coach had told me a few years before; gymnastics contained a lot of psychological aspects.
I took PE as a GCSE and A level, and it was at A level the concept of Sport Psychology was introduced to me. I instantly was fascinated. I had wanted to study Psychology as well for A level, but my mum convinced me otherwise, but this topic of Sport Psychology further proved to me how fascinated I was with human behaviour. I had no idea what I wanted to do after my A-levels, but uni seemed to be the option most of my friends were looking at, so I did too. I still loved sport but up until that point no one had made it seem like a sport degree gave me many other options than being a PE teacher (which was not something I wanted to do) or Physiotherapy. I literally stumbled across a BSc Sport and Exercise Psychology degree at Bangor University, I had no idea it was something I could actually study and make a career in. I visited and fell in love, and that was sorted.
I didn’t have a lot of preconceptions about what Sport Psychology was. To me I thought it meant I would be like a therapist for athletes, helping them deal with their fears or other problems, possibly working alongside the coach. That sounded like a great career path to me seeing how much I had enjoyed coaching gymnastics and loved sport. A few people on the course had similar thoughts, they knew they wanted to work with athletes and be a practicing Psychologist and I fell in with these few people. However, most of the people studying with me had just found this course and it was two subjects they loved and wanted to learn more about. They did not want to pursue a career in Sport Psychology, but they loved the course. I think you see this a lot with Psychology degrees; half the students know exactly what aspect of Psychology they are interested in and want careers in that field, particularly practitioner careers. The other half just love the subject and want to learn even more about it. Most of my friends were the ones that knew, and so I went along with them because at the time this was the only career option I understood you could get from Psychology. So, I wanted to be a Sport and Exercise Psychologist.
But then third year came around, and three things happened. Firstly, I took a counselling skills module. It involved a lot of self-reflection and a glimpse into the skills and qualities required of a Psychologist. That module gave me so many new listening and communication skills that have helped me in my everyday life to be a better friend and person to the people around me, however I knew after that module I do not have what it takes to be a Sport Psychologist. My patience and empathy are lacking, which has since been confirmed from my time working in customer service, and I was starting to become aware of the uncertainty of a career as a Sport Psychologist.
Secondly, it was the dreaded dissertation, except for Psychology degrees it’s a research project. Whilst a lot of my friends were complaining about their diss or projects, I was thriving. I had never been so completely engrossed in a piece of work before. I’m not a stats lover and I had never done anything like it before. But I loved the process of taking an idea of something I was genuinely interested in and diving deep into the topic. I enjoyed knowing that I was finding something out that no one else had ever looked at before. And I liked the idea that the work I could do would make a difference to the field.
Thirdly, I got a new interest. I had a lecture on the Psychology of sleep, and I was instantly hooked. I started watching podcasts and reading books about the topic. I realised what an overlooked aspect of our everyday lives it was, and I gained a passion to want to increase our knowledge and change our attitudes towards our sleep.
Those three experiences led to me realise that the path of a practitioner was not for me, what I really enjoyed was academics and research, and sleep was my area of interest. Quite different from where I started.
I then struggled to decide what route to take towards a research career. I thought that a research degree would be my best option and help lead me to a PhD, and I could research exactly what I wanted. However, with the guidance of my parents and personal tutor I chose instead to continue in Sport Psychology and complete my MSc at Loughborough University, where I could complete my research project on the topic of sleep. This was supposedly to keep my options open; I was still on the practitioner path if I wanted to and in the safety of Sport Psychology which I still enjoyed but could explore my interest in sleep with some world-leading experts.
I completed my MSc with a project exploring sleep tracking technology in sport and exercise. I loved it. It confirmed my interest in sleep and that I still had that passion for getting into the nitty gritty of a topic and seeing what else I could add to the discussion. However, the MSc also confirmed that whilst I still found Sport Psychology interesting, my interests had shifted away from performance and athletes, and more towards the public health domain. There was considerably less emphasis on alternative pathways in my Masters degree, as most of the people studying this far wanted to be practitioners, so it was important I spoke to as many different people as possible to understand the possible routes. Through these discussions I decided my aim in the long term is to complete a PhD in sleep and sport, possibly to do with training times or maybe to do with tracking devices. However, I am in no rush to compete this anytime soon.
My path in the year since then has been a bit all over the place. A degree in Sport Psychology means when you finish, you don’t have grad job schemes or even obvious jobs you should be applying for with that degree, especially when you don’t want to be a practitioner. Although this can potentially be daunting, it also means you have the opportunity to try lots of different things and see what interests you. But until I had that figured out, it meant going full-time on the part-time job I had at University at B&Q. The job market right now is terrible, no matter what sector you are in, and it has been a long year of applying and rejection.
However, in this year I got the role of a Casual Research Assistant at the University of Hertfordshire on the Women in Sport High Performance Pathway (WISH) Programme. I analysed the impact of the programme on the women that went through it, as well as what worked well, what skills and concepts they learnt and still use, and the network it has created. WISH is funded by Olympic Solidarity and aims to increase the number of women coaches at the Olympics. It is the most empowering and inspiring environment I have ever been part of. The women that created the programme and the coaches taking part are incredible, and gave me confidence, and a network of women I can ask for advice and support. It also gave me a new passion for advocating for women and giving us spaces where we can thrive, lifting each other up and working with one another to succeed. The feeling WISH gave me is something I want to carry with me for life and share with other people.
I am now about to start a new job working as an Assistant Research and Evaluations Officer in my local County Council for their public health department. I am sure this is going to be a completely different experience to academia, and I am looking forward to learning more about the options I have in research and where they can take me. I am still influenced by my passion for sleep and hope this role allows me to explore that further, as well as see what I can do to help empower other women. My goal is still to complete a PhD in the future, however with other dreams such as travelling, who knows how long that will take or if that goal changes. I can’t wait to see where these next 2 years will lead me to.
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