My
First Psychology Semester
I
was kind of shocked that there wasn't going to be any tests, and I
was wondering how the class was going to work without any way to
assess what we learned. I quickly learned that Dr. Pris had her own
ways of doing so. She would have us get into groups and discuss
different topics of our modules. The modules we had were:
Getting
to know Me, You, and Psychology:
In this module we had to go about creating our first blog, this was
interesting for me because I had never done anything with blogs. It
took us about 45 minutes to get it set up, but once we did, I was
able to post a snip-it of my life for my classmates, and I was also
able to learn a lot about each of my classmates.
Brain,
Sensation, and Perception:
This module was about how our brains are able to preserve different
things around us, and also how our brains develop. I was struck by
how many different parts of the brain there are and how each part
functions. For our experiential task for this module we had to
interview someone with a teenage child and get their opinion on why
their children behave in a certain way, and after getting their
opinion on this we had to show them a video on this with factual
research and see if we could teach them something that they did not
know before. It was easy for me to find someone to interview because
my stepsister is a teenager, so I just interviewed my stepdad about
her. He didn't seem to be startled by the research, but at least I
was able to teach him something.
Developmental
Psychology & Personality:
For the developmental module I learned about the Nature vs. Nurture
principle. This states that your environment can impact the way you
turn out. It also says that if you are nurtured in a different
environment that you came from you can be changed by the new
environment. I think there are pros and cons arguments for both
sides. I believe the way we are raised can impact us but we do have
the power to make our own choices. For the personality part I took a
personality test for this part of the module. I did not agree with
the results, because it said that I would make a good teacher or
nurse. I have no interest in being either one.
Learning
and Memory:
I learned that animals can be taught to preform a certain behavior
just by the smell of certain foods. Pavlov's experiment in which he
placed a bowl of meat in front of a dog. The dog learned to
anticipate getting the meat by his footsteps and the sound of the
bell. The dog would also smell the meat and start to slobber too.
Dogs can learn to preform a certain behavior due to the anticipation
of getting a treat.
Motivations,
Emotions, & Social Psychology:
In this module, I got to do something pretty special, I got to shed
light on a friend of mine's story, Matt Baran. Matt is my tech person
for Region IV. Matt is a quadriplegic due to a bull riding accident
that he had.
Psychological
Disorders and Therapy:
This module was about any counselors or anybody we had help us in our
lives. I told my story about Patrick Fogal a councilor at Freedom
Counseling who helped me through some difficult times in my life.
Positive
Psychology:
This was about how to use positive influence to help in dealing with
patients or just people you are working with.
The
module that stood out to me the most was the memory module. The
reason for this is because of the video we had to watch about a man
who got convicted of rape because the victim in the rape identified
him as the rapist when he wasn't even there, just because he looked
like the person. I was also shocked at how many different types of
learning there is. One class period that stood out to me was when Dr.
Pris was talking about how back in the 1800s people with mental
illness would be locked away and sent to the London Zoo for people to
gawk at them. This shocked me and made me kind of upset that people
would do that. I am sure glad there is better help out there now. We
have had many outside student lead activities, but the one that stood
out to me the most was the one when we had to break social norms. I
loved seeing people's reactions of us sitting close to them and how
startled they were. One of my favorite experiential tasks was when I
interviewed my caregivers parents on the subject of memory and the
eye witness video. This was my favorite because of again, seeing
their reactions when they wrote down something that was not on the
list that I presented to them. They created a false memory that I
found interesting. My favorite blog post I wrote/videoed about was
when I got to share Matt's story. If you want to know more then
please refer back to what I said earlier about this video.
I found
one of my classmates (Desiree Melendez's) blogs to be the most
helpful because of the details she would put into her blog and
enjoyed seeing her videos with her daughter this is her link to her
blog: (http://desipsych.blogspot.com/).
Sarah Rodgers comment on my life story blog was helpful because she
wanted to pursue the same field as I do (sport psychology).
One
thing that also stood out to me during class time learning is when we
are so easily distracted that we don't realize when someone is even
pick-pocketing us. We are distracted by our phones and other things.
The TedTalk videos we had to watch and the other videos were pretty
helpful because it taught us more information that we had not learned
in class. Some of the videos that I liked were the exoskeleton one
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQzXqjT0w3k),
Eye Witness (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-SBTRLoPuo),
and Pavlov's Dog experiment
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhqumfpxuzI).
The reason I like the exoskeleton video is because I was amazed by
the technology that is available to us today, and the possibilities
of what can be accomplished.
My
biggest take-away from all of this will be learning how to read
people and why people behave the was that they do. I'll be able to
tell if people are genuine or just putting on an act. I will be able
to apply this personally in everything that I do. I will also be able
to apply what I have learned professionally when I advance into the
career of Sport Psychology. This will help me better understand
athletes and their mindsets so that I can help them when I pursue
Sports Psychology field. Thank you Dr. Pris for all you have taught
us.
