What do you want to do with your education
Your decisions depend on what you want: what would make your degree feel "successful"?
Do you want to learn factoids that will give you interesting dinner party conversation?
Study undergrad psychology!
Actually, maybe study history instead. History is full of interesting content and you're probably less likely to be incorrect or spread misinformation if you study history.
Do you want to go to grad school in psych?
Learn to program in R and Python.
Take an introductory programming course so you learn the principles, not just the one language. If you learn how to code, you can learn to code in any language. R is easy and you should do your stats in R, not SPSS.
Volunteer in a lab.
The best time to start was yesterday and the second best time to start is now. Everything you learn in your content courses is either obsolete or will be obsolete soon: that is the nature of a young science. In the lab, you learn skills and make connections. This is what you need to actually learn to do research. Show initiative and be ambitious! Don't be forgettable to your superiors: a lot comes down to who you know, not what you know. Try to contribute so much that you get on papers.
Do you want to become a career academic?
Focus on two things: publishing and getting grants.
Take this to heart and you will go far. If you do amazing research, but don't publish it, you will go nowhere. Learn to write better. Read books about writing or attend writing workshops. Prepare yourself for the possible reality that it might not work out.
Do you want to do good science?
Learn about philosophy of science and understand statistics.
I'll say it again because this is so important and lacking in psych: understand statistics. Learn about power. Learn Bayesian statistical methods. Learn about the replication crisis and about Open Science. Learn about pre-registration and pre-register your research.
Index
Return to Undergraduate Psychology
Continue to You don't need undergrad psych to study psych in grad school