Today I have interviewed Professor Jim Larson, Ph.D. I took his class last semester (PSCH 330) and I really liked it. It was an Industrial and Organizational Psychology class and that’s how I became interested in that field. I connected with the Professor right away, and I really liked his way of teaching. He was always very passionate about teaching that course and that made it more interesting. To my surprise, today I learned that he does not have a degree in IO Psychology, as I expected. He has a degree in Social Psychology, but the area of his research overlaps with IO Psychology, so he teaches that course as well. Professor Larson graduated from the University of Washington with a Ph.D. Before he came to teach at UIC, he taught at Colombia College for five years. He also teaches PSCH 242, 312, 313, 330, and 343. What he loves about his job is the freedom, having control over the style of his teaching and some flexibility. He likes it that it is not the same thing over and over again; his job has a lot of variety. He was fortune enough not to struggle too much in graduate school. He wasn’t married so he had a lot of time to devote into studying. He was also employed as a research assistant so he was able to combine his research from school and work into one so he actually got paid for it. I enjoyed talking to him and he made me more optimistic about graduate school, because up until this point all I heard were scary stories J.