Disclaimer: Is this a rant? Yes, kind of. But I'd really like the world to know these things about WJC. Yes, I know that my individual experience is not representative of the entire student body, however, this is an illustration of how ridiculous and hostile this school can be.
I was admitted to the William James College Clinical Psychology program in 2020 (2025 cohort). William James College looks great on paper, and their website is immaculately curated. It was pretty much THE school I wanted to attend for a PsyD. I was a forensic concentration.
Things were relatively fine (plus or minus a bump in the road) until the end of my second year. That is where the majority of this started and ended at the close of the Fall 2023 semester. Am I surprised that this was the result? No, not really. I've never been so miserable in my entire life as when I was at this school. I had stressors both in and outside of the program. My mental health plummeted, and essentially, I had an emotional breakdown.
This will be the first of at least four posts.
Year 1 (2020): My entire first academic year was virtual. I moved to Massachusetts from Utah in July 2020. The house that I moved into was recently remodeled (more like flipped), and the sellers were my backyard neighbors. Over the course of the year, I had to deal with falling trees and limbs, damage to the garage roof, and a flooded basement (x3). I spent Christmas Day 2020 hauling buckets and buckets of water up the stairs and out to the driveway. The seller at one point said, "there's never been any water in the basement." Come to find out, they had also removed a sump pump from the basement. They said that there had never been one... It was about 5k to install a new one.
There was an issue with the home inspection permit not being signed off. This ended up being a clerical error of the city. However, that pissed off the sellers, and I ended up changing all the locks on the house because of it. In Oct, a massive tree limb from their tree, fell inches away from the hood of my car and damaged the garage roof. In May (2021), the other neighbor's tree uprooted and fell into my yard. It was rotted and termite ridden. I had no power tools at the time. My mother and brother were moving in with me July 2021. My mother said to just cut up what I could and we would dispose of it once they arrived. The seller, called the city on me. I received a warning that I had unsafe debris on my property. I had to pay approx. 2k for a company to come chip the wood and haul it away. My family moved in four weeks later... About a month or so later, the house insurance cancelled our policy (Travelers) because I made three claims (Oct garage repairs, Dec flooded basement, May fallen tree). Over the winter, I caught the seller's husband dumping his dog's feces down into my yard (they live on an incline above us). Thankfully a fence has since been installed. And yes, fences do indeed make good neighbors.
During my first year at William James, I was taking approx. 4-5 classes each semester and two in the summer (required), and I was working approx. 16-18 hours/week (virtually) as a student intern for a community mental health clinic. I had some difficulties with this placement, mainly because I didn't particularly like my supervisor. I found her two-faced and unprofessional. At the start of my onboarding, while reviewing all necessary documents a client receives on their first session, she told me to just go ahead and click the "yes, I consent" box (ahead of time, haven't even met with the client yet). She said, "they always say yes" and framed this as a way to save time. I was uncomfortable with this, because this was a state-level database where individual's (age 5-21) had their CANS assessments stored and tracked. This database had a warning before you could submit, that all information had to be correct, because it would remain in the database for ten years. I met with the 1&2 Year practicum coordinator about this. She essentially told me, "You're only going to be there for eight months. just do what your supervisor tells you."
Over the course of that placement, my supervisor would, at times call into group supervision, gleeful that she was on unapproved vacation. "Don't tell anybody, but guess where I am?" "Alaska." A colleague from that community health center (whom I worked with later on), at one point ran into my supervisor at the airport, as she (supervisor) was disembarking from a flight.
In total I only had three clients during that placement. Two individuals (one child, one young adult) and a family. When I reminded both my supervisor and clients that my training contract would be ending in two months' time, my supervisor and her superiors refused to refer any further clients to me. I essentially spent 1/3 of this placement not working because of this. At one point, my supervisor and I were at odds. She wanted me to feel 'celebratory' that one of my clients had "graduated" from the program. He didn't. He discontinued services because he could not balance time between long working hours and a late evening session (7/8pm). She was put off that I wasn't happy. That I wasn't responding the way she thought I should.
By the end of the training placement, my supervisor was getting my clients' and the other student intern's (also from WJC) clients information mixed up. I started seeing narratives and people's names that I did not recognize. She was always in a hurry.
On the side of coursework, most of it was unremarkable until I received a CAN from the school. A Corrective Action Notice (CAN) is a document that you will receive if you are falling behind in a class, at risk of low grades, miss classes (depending on the prof), unprofessional behavior, issues with your doctoral project (dissertation), or any issues at your training placement. Every time you receive one, they tell you that it's not a punishment. And yet, you are required to meet with your academic advisor and also the person who filed the CAN. CANs documents outline what they think you have done wrong and creates (usually a list) a set of solutions. You are required to put your signature on these. Any nonadherence to a CAN comes with an implied threat that you will be facing consequences if you don't do what is exactly in the CAN. ...Not a punishment. These most likely, mainly exist for legal purposes, because the school has been sued before.
The entire time I was at William James I received 7-8 CANs, nearly one each semester. In Fall 2020, I received one because my Stats midterm grade was a B-. This was at the time the basement kept flooding. I met with the professor, and I met with my advisor. I was then required to meet with the TA for one hour/week and attend tutoring. I got the same exact score on the final exam (B-), I passed the class with a B. This was basically a non-issue.
Spring 2021, I received a CAN for missing two classes for one course, and for not responding fast enough to my academic advisor when she checked in. She emailed me on a Friday; it was pretty much finals week. I was feeling stressed and overwhelmed. I made the mistake of not reading the GRADUATE STUDENT HANDBOOK (which you are also required to sign) carefully enough. I had read that students are allowed two absences in a given semester, unless there are special circumstances. Apparently, both absences have to be excused/approved by the professor. Most profs during this time weren't really bothering about this. It was during COVID and everyone had some degree of flexibility because of those greater circumstances. I unluckily missed two classes of a prof who strictly adhered to that rule. Speaking with my advisor is when I learned that I hadn't read that caveat closely enough. I said, "I don't agree" with the policy (bc its silly and not applied standard by faculty to begin with), but said that, "I will follow it." My advisor asked me if I wanted to meet with the Dean on this. I said no, because I would respect it. A couple days later I received an email invitation for a mandatory meeting with the dean (and my advisor), that warned of consequences (more CANs) if not followed. I managed to survive the meeting, and was asked, "do you even want to be in this program?" I said, "I would not have applied if I didn't want to be here." I then had to prove it by talking about what I enjoyed about the program.
That was year one.