Interview with University of Texas Psychology Lecturer

Adolph Delgado is currently a lecturer 1 at the University of Texas, San Antonio, where he teaches Data Management and Statistics. He holds a Bachelor’s in Psychology and a Master’s in Health and Kinesiology.

Personal:

Was there a specific event in your life that triggered you getting into psych?

…I have a brother in California that was a psychotherapist and I got to meet him in the last 10 years. He wasn’t a person I grew up with and seeing him interact with people, I felt it was a necessary skill to have as a human being. Not only to talk to humans, but to learn how to listen. After that, I declared psychology as my major.

Do you have any funny stories?

I was working in a lab for my mentor and she was really strict. I had something due the next day and when you have a deadline for her, you had to meet it, no excuses… I had two pair of shoes, my coffee machine and I basically brought my home there. I fell asleep in the lab so I could just get up in the morning and work on my paper. A research assistant found me and later on, my mentor called me in and said: “is everything alright at home?” do you have a place to stay?” She thought I was homeless!”

Aww haha.

It was awkward but funny; the story got around in my department and people respected that.

Academics/Career:

Did you do a lot of research in your undergrad studies or was it more for your masters?

In my undergrad, I did a lot.  I was apart of 4 different research labs.  Strictly for the fact that I wanted to see what’s out there.  With psychology, it’s so broad.  So how do you know what you want to do?  So I started working in a bunch of labs, so that kind of helped me choose what I wanted to do.

You said psych is very broad and there’s a bunch of different fields of psych so that’s why you did all these labs. Well, what’s the most appealing field of psych to you? Or what position in psych would you want to obtain in the future?

Health psychology because of the mind body interaction.   Ideally, my dream position would be to be a professor in a tier 1 school conducting health research. What type of health research? I’m not sure yet but right now I’m researching sexual psychology and HIV prevention.   So that’s one thing I like to work on.   It’s just really hands on and the current trend.

What you’ll notice in psychology is that everything goes in trends so this year is bullying and next year is going to be stress. So you just kind of have to go with it and especially in doctoral programs, most people do the small research because grants and funding allow for research to be conducted with the current trends.  So you have to be really fluent and flexible when you do your research.

After you master’s, did you work anywhere else or did you go straight into being a lecturer?

I went straight into being a lecturer, but I have been working as a stats consultant in mainly psychological researches. So basically, I work with a lot of people doing their dissertations and I help them with their method sections and advise them on their stats.  And it’s really complicated, the more in depth you go with your research, the more challenging it is to analyze material.

Advice:

What are a few pieces of credible advice you’d provide psych students who are currently chasing after their dreams?

My first is get involved with your school, especially your department.  There’s so many opportunities in terms of research, networking, etc.  What I tell a lot of people and what I notice a lot is that people complain they didn’t go to a tier 1 school or a big 10 school; and the thing is: it doesn’t matter where you go, but what you do there.  And universities…conduct a lot of research and there’s many ways of getting involved.  They usually have a person in charge of recruiting or in charge of getting in charge of internships, so just make yourself available for those.

Is there anything else you’d want to share with us?

There are many roads to Rome and the road we thought was the best or the only one we thought would reach our outcome, it may not work. So I think we need to be very flexible, we need to be very patient…know that nothing in life is truly linear or constant.

To contact Adolph Delgado for any career advice or questions, please email him at: mix498@my.utsa.edu.