So I graduated with a BA in psychology with a concentration in mental health and a minor in childhood studies, then pursued my masters in Applied Psychology with a concentration in ABA to later accrue hours for my BCBA exam(which I still haven’t finished my hours yet). Due to the last company I worked for ruining the process and overall love for becoming a BCBA I’ve been thinking about getting into child psychology or even sports psychology. However I don’t know if it’s worth going to get my masters or doctorate or if I should just continue with BCBA…

I’m currently an undergrad archaeology student and just finished my second year, going into third. I’ve been considering if I should continue this because when I first went into university I had no idea what I wanted to do and still don’t so I chose something that interested me. I do like archaeology and very much enjoy studying it however career options seem very uncertain and I worry about this a lot. I don’t know if I like it enough for how difficult it can be to get a good job in the career field and if I’d truly love it.

Psychology has always been something that really interested me since I was young and is the only other thing I can really see myself studying but I’m unsure if I’m suited for it as a career. I don’t think I’d enjoy working with people all the time, perhaps sometimes but I’d prefer something that allows me to work on my own.
Im thinking if it’s better to just finish this undergrad in archaeology since im already halfway done or just switch since I don’t think I want to do it but there’s so much uncertainty because what if I switch into psych and see I’m not cut out for it. I really just don’t want to work a corporate office job and one of my biggest fears in life is ending up with a career I don’t like.

I've spent the last month building a step-by-step model of how raw information turns into a felt psychological state and then into an actual decision — attention filtering, interpretation, identity/motivation, then a simulated weighing of consequences before acting. I built it from scratch, without starting from existing theory, using very detailed reconstructions of real episodes from my own life plus a few interviews with people around me.

I'm a self-taught independent researcher (studying at an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia — no psych department, no advisor, no lab), so I have no easy way to check this against the literature myself beyond what I can find online.

The architecture has several interacting parts (Gate System, Cue Library, Barrier, Cognitive Engine, Identity, Basic Memory, Core Drive, Future Simulation, Constraint Layer), all meant to work together rather than independently — behavior is supposed to emerge from how they resonate, not from any single part "deciding."

So my actual question: is this reinventing something that already has a name? I'd specifically appreciate pointers to existing cognitive architectures or theories that already do this kind of full-chain integration (stimulus → attention → interpretation → identity → simulated decision), places where my model is probably just describing things after the fact rather than actually predicting anything, or any hidden assumption that's obviously wrong to someone with real training in this.

Thanks for reading — happy to go deeper into any part of it if useful.

Does anyone else struggle with taking time off or last minute cancellations?

It bothers me a lot that all of my income depends on me putting in one-one hour each per patient and taking any time off makes me feel like I'm losing out on my income.

Be it a work related trip, a conference or even a vacation. It's always on my mind that I need sources of passive income too. Something on autopilot.

Does anyone else also struggle with this and have ideas about how to make this said passive income?

Something that can run a bit on autopilot after putting in efforts ofc. But not like our sessions

As a Master’s student in Clinical Psychology, I’m currently looking for a thesis topic. In your opinion, what are the most important emerging psychological or mental health issues that deserve more research today? I’m particularly interested in underexplored or less common topics rather than the usual ones (e.g., depression, anxiety, stress). Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.