Dr Simboli Interview

Dr. Simboli is the school psychologist at the Pearl River Middle School.  Two students named Matthew Prigge and Richard Boyko decided to ask Dr. Simboli a few questions to receive primary information on modern psychology. The following are the exact words mentioned at the interview.  

1.    What does a psychologist do and are they involved with sociology?

Answer: “ Well that is a very good question. Well the answer is yes; we do get involved in sociology at some point. A psychologist is a person who studies human behavior, as a general term. Since we live in the state of N.Y, psychologist is a protected term, and it only applies to someone who is licensed to practice the profession of psychology and that’s either in a private setting or in a school. A psychologist studies human behavior on all levels, some psychologists focus mainly on neurology and the biology of behavior and the chemical world on the neural level other people focus on how individuals think and feel, like in a clinical setting such as therapy. And others focus on how organizations think and behave in large settings such as industrial psychologists or political psychologists or people that have shared interests in psychology and the study of human behavior of large groups of sociology, that’s how they are alike.”

      Answer: “ A sociologist is a person who studies the behavior of large groups of people usually within culture or over a long period of time. A psychologist, except for what I said, or for people that are social psychologist, whom mostly focus on how people interact with each other. Most psychologists focus on the behavior of individuals or the behavior of small groups of people. In the state of N.Y as I said, a psychologist is a protected and licensed term, meanwhile sociology, is not. Someone with a four-year diploma from many colleges can call themselves a sociologist. To be called a psychologist in the state of New York you must possess a doctorate degree as two years of post doctorate internship and pass a licensed test at both the state and national levels.”

Answer: “Absolutely, work, play and interactions or relationships with other people are the three main focuses of what any person does with their day. So, its at least one third of what we deal with are relationships.

Answer: Sure, friendships can be either absent, which means that someone is alone, or lonely and that could be for many reasons, they may not feel comfortable reaching to other students to socialize and talk to, they may have also had bad experiences in the past, and are afraid to try again, or it could have been because other students may have had given them a hard time, peer teasing or something like it happens. That may be in the absence of friendships. The other may be a student has to many friendships but not good enough, because you have all these people around you that none really cares or understands about each other, the quality of the relationship goes down. Now, even when relationships go well, and you have friends, there will always be conflict. And that is something that we often work on in schools. You always have to deal with conflict because at one point it will arise, they are sometimes constructive. So conflict can teach you that the world is not perfect. If it does not happen then you will never gain new ideas. So conflict is good, when it is handled correctly. 

Note: Two students named Rich and Matt begin a conversation with Dr, Simboli during this answer.

Answer: Well, for having a friendship, you need to respect yourself, as an individual, and respect the other person, in their own thoughts and feelings and ways of thinking, separate from you. And then, at the next level is to communicate, and tell people what’s going on, how you feel, what you think, what you like to do, and how you have fun, share your ideas. We sometimes assume that other people know what we think and feel and I guess that there are situations where we don’t always… know how to , uhh, be with someone else. Share the time and make constructive use of it.  What do you think about that?

Rich is now going to speak: Well , like yeah I think I basically agree with restoring a friendship that way because as you, proceed in that you um, like cause you call them or like you said, communicate a lot. Then they will think you care about them and respect yourself, if you are taking up that much courage to do that with somebody that you have already fought with.

Back to Dr. Simboli: In any relationship, it takes effort, and some relationships friendships, or work probably are better than you can let them go, witch takes a lot of effort and some relationships, friendships are worth a lot of effort and some probably are better, so you could let them go. Its for you (yourself) to decide. You naturally will develop many friend ships."

And so ends our interview with our school psychologist. All of  the people that helped to make this page issue special thanks to Dr. Simboli.