My interest for a career in the future is to be a Psychologist. Since I’m so interested in this topic, I decided to base my project in Psychology. Mr. Williams, my school psychologist, became the person who I interviewed to get an insight on what Psychologists use as jargon. Please note that all the questions and answers are summarized and are not what he or I exactly said.
First of all, would you mind telling me where you went to college/university and what you studied?
For my undergraduate, I went to OSU or Ohio State University and then when I became a graduate, I went to study in the University of Kentucky. I studied school psychology and clinical child psychology.
Could you tell me what you learned while you were in school?
During my years in college, I learned that jargon is not something one should use while talking to patients.
Why not?
Since psychology has many acronyms, it’s very difficult to understand them specially if you don’t know a lot about psychology. So, for example, if you started talking about the IEP that is included in the IDEA, you would be the only one who understands what you’re talking about. If you’re talking to a patient with jargon, they might get confused or feel stupid because they don’t know the acronyms.
That makes sense. I wouldn’t like to not know what people are talking about, especially if it’s something important.
Right. That’s why we don’t use it with other people, but we do use it within us.
Could you give me some examples of some jargon you use in your meetings and stuff?
Let me see… There’s the IEP which I mentioned earlier. That means Individualized Education Plan. There’s also IDEA which is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. I bet there are much more jargons out there that I can’t remember of, but I will give you a whole list tomorrow.
After the interview, I had a list of approximately 10 jargon and some notes on why jargon is bad to use in therapies or student counseling sessions.
