I'm thinking of majoring in psychology and becoming a clinical psychologist (or some type of counselor, I haven't decided what exactly I want to do), but I don't know if this is the right field for me. What if I do all that work to get my Master's or Phd and find that I hate it? I mean, I love studying psychology, but what if I don't like the actual practice? Being a counselor would mean that I work with patients everyday, and I'm not exactly a people person. I can get along with anyone, but I'm so introverted that I don't really enjoy socializing and need a lot of alone time.
I guess what I'm asking is, what characteristics does it take to be a counselor/psychologist? I need to know if I'm suited for this type of career. Will I not like it if I don't particularly like socializing/interacting with people? Are there ways I could make it work for me?
I believe that the best counsellors combine introspection and the ability to combine self-insight, self-reflection and self-awareness with, for the time that they are in direct personal contact with someone, the soft skills or interpersonal skills but that's an important point, it is only for the perhaps hour or more than you will spend in direct contact with somene that you need to be a "people person" and depending upon your discipline your analytical skills could be more important.
In a clinical psychological job I think you would have a lot of assessment, the collating of seperate information, maybe face to face contacts aswell but I've known clinical psychologists to be commissioned to produce reports only in which case, as I say, they take the seperate submissions which are made to them and with the specialist knowledge available to them from their training draw conclusions on the basis of that evidence.
The fact that you're even asking these sorts of questions I think is a good sign and probably a clue that you'd be well suited, the amount of people who I've encountered in posts of a similar kind and I've wondered "how did you get here?", "how did you not know that this job would involve something you appear to hate?", its a little like someone becoming a fire man who has a chronic aversion to fire but it is something which I see again and again. There are two things which I think contribute to it, firstly, the suspiscion on everyones part that everyday ordinary skills are sufficient to the tasks involved in the role and that there's just a hell of a lot of intellectual camoflaging of that, secondly, it would appear to be an easily accessed profession, as opposed to law, medicine, science research, with the money and status which accompanies it.
The question about whether or not having an interest or inclination towards reading about something makes for that being your actual line of work is a good question too, I've heard lots of people say that you should do what you are, as in if you would naturally read or do such things then getting paid for it is a bonus, that is true to a certain extent but there will be days, be prepared for this if you make the decision to opt for it, that you're sick of what once interested you and you need to develop completely new and seperate interests from work altogether.
Finally, I would recommend this kind of profession, I think its very personally rewarding and interesting but there is a throw away line in one of the episodes of Hannibal about people in psychology departments being a bunch of psychological deficients (while he takes pride in being a psychopath Hannibal is probably talking about himself in this respect too) which has a grain of truth in it.