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Today’s Ypulse Author Spotlight is on Alicia Thompson and her debut novel Psych Major Syndrome, the story of Leigh Nolan, a — you guessed it — psychology major navigating though her first year of college. Prone to overanalyzing everything (read: parents, boyfriends, professors etc.)  both inside and outside the classroom, Leigh taps into that universal freshman fear of taking an irreversible wrong first step.

Psych Major Syndrome comes out in August, but we’re giving away two advance copies to the first two commenters who share what they wished they knew before their first year of college. Winners will also have the chance to submit a review, that will be considered for Alicia’s website, as well as a signed copy of the book after its official release.

Ypulse: How much of Leigh’s story was drawn from your own experience as a psych major? Did you have a similar dynamic with your parents and/or friends?

Alicia Thompson: I went to a liberal arts school (population 700) where the psych department was small and we were treated like grad students (just like Leigh), and I wrote the book while I was working on my senior thesis and going to weekly study groups for the Psych GRE. I was flipping through the GRE study guide and doing my usual thing where I’m a quasi-perfectionist and a quasi-slacker – making obsessively color coded flash cards about every term, then staying up all night the night before the test playing poker for M&M’s instead of studying. So I started thinking about the kind of girl who would use a GRE study guide like it was her life map, instead of just a tool for rote memorization to get you through a test.

My dynamic with both my college roommates was very similar to Leigh’s with Ami. They were both art or art history majors, very creative, and very good about being there for me whenever we needed to make a Dippin’ Dots run or make fun of romance novels or analyze what we were going to do with the rest of our lives. One was a bridesmaid in my wedding, and one took my wedding pictures (and my author photo!) so we’re still close.

My dynamic with my parents is totally different. My mom is a lawyer and my dad is a computer programmer, so pretty much the complete OPPOSITE of Leigh’s. We’re very close, but they’re not at all mystical or new age-y (although my dad does wear a lot of tie-dye on his days off). I was scared to write parents that seemed too close to my own in case they were weirded out by that, so I think I overcompensated by making Leigh’s parents on the other end of the spectrum.

YP: Do you see a difference between how teens overanalyze/stress out now than in the past? What are they?

AT: I have an 18-year-old sister and a 16-year-old brother, and their experiences seem to be pretty close to mine at those ages – worrying about life after high school, wondering if so-and-so likes them, fighting with best friends and then making up again. I think what you really learn from reading classic YA like Judy Blume and then contemporary YA like Meg Cabot is that adolescence is a time when everyone is going to freak out a little. Psychologist (awesome alliterative name alert) Erik Erikson said that adolescence was the time when we all struggle to find our identity, and I think that’s definitely truer today than it’s ever been before.

YP: What do you wish you had known your first year of college? Is there a message you hope teens take away from Leigh’s story?

AT: There are two things I wish I had known about college when I started: One, don’t be afraid to get out of your comfort zone. I wish I had researched on one professor who’s really cool or interesting and dynamic and taken his or her class, no matter what the subject was, just to see if maybe that professor could ignite a passion for learning a topic I hadn’t previously studied.

Two, now that I actually teach first-year college students at USF: go to your professor’s office hours! When I was in my first year of college, I took an electronic music class because I thought it sounded fun and I wanted to know what my now-husband was talking about when he referenced compression or dynamic microphones. But it was way more advanced than I’d expected, and I ended up dropping it. My professor later told me that I had been doing fine, and it was just my perception that I was so far behind. If I’d been brave enough to meet with him BEFORE I dropped the class, I would’ve known that before it was too late. Now that I’m on the other side, I always wish students would come talk to me rather than suffer in silence.

Those both relate to the main thing I hope teens take away from my book. Sometimes you have to tell your brain to take a break and follow your heart. And you could spend your whole life analyzing every tiny thing, but then you might miss out on the big picture which is actually kind of awesome.

YP: How has studying psychology had an impact on your writing?

AT: It’s a chicken-egg situation, but I’m all about characters. I’m fascinated by people – their quirks, stories, catastrophes, dreams . . . My favorite thing in my psych classes was whenever we got a case study and would analyze it to figure out what that individual’s diagnosis would be. It’s the same process as writing a character – what matters to this person? What events have added up to make this person who he or she is? I always think of my main character before I even come up with the plot. It’s like I have to meet the character, spend a few hours on the therapy couch together hashing out personal histories and pet peeves and secret goals, and then figure out what story that character wants to tell.

YP: What comes next for you?

AT: I’m actually working on another novel that is very psychology-based, but in a different way. It’s about a girl struggling with an eating disorder, which is really just her way of dealing with everything else in her life – an absent father, failing grades in school, the distance she’s feeling from her best friend. She doesn’t know how to express herself any other way than to hurt herself, and she can’t heal until she realizes that she’s not the only one hurting.

I’m also writing a middle-grade series about four elite gymnasts with a former Olympic gold medalist. Which pretty much means that I watch gymnastics clips on YouTube and tune in to “Make It or Break It” every week and call it research.

For more coverage of YA books and publishing, check out the Ypulse Books Channel sponsored by Pick a Poppy – the home of today’s hottest fiction.

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Categorized under: Author Spotlight, Books & Print

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