This week has been kind of a blur because of the ACT/Workeys. I got really far behind on notes, so I really hope I can get back on track over the weekend. It has been really stressful trying to keep up with notes and other classes, but once I get caught up I think I will be fine. We also really need to do our experiment this week. There hasn't been any time to do it this week. The pop quiz was really rough because if the whole not- having- any- notes thing. I did the reading but it's really hard to recall everything. ALSO QUESTION DREIER- why do some people get to use their textbooks on the quizzes??!?!? Ari, Brennan, and I are just wondering. I think you're pulling some psychological crap and are seeing if any of us notice we can use our books or if we will just listen to what you say and obey. So if pull out my book during the next quiz you can't tell at me because that's bogus? I'm onto you.

This week was a bit of a struggle in terms of catching up on notes before the quiz on Thursday. I didn't really fall behind on the reading, but I did on the notes so I had to do 6 modules in a day. I hope that taught me my lesson about keeping up. Also, we tried to run our experiment but a teacher is holding us up a little bit. Hopefully we will be able to do it next week. On the positive side, we are pretty much done with the conditioning experiment already so we don't have to worry about that. I'm going to try to completely catch up on vocab notes over the weekend and start getting ready for the test right away so I don't wait until the day before like last time...

The test on Wednesday was a little (lot) rough. I studied really hard the night before, but it was hard to commit all that information to memory so quickly. Right after the test, I thought I did decent. I did worse than I thought, but I'm still good with my score until the retake. Also, on Thursday I attempted to do the first part of our experiment in Zuengler's Integrated Science class. It did not go nearly as smoothly as I would have liked, but it was a good first trial run and I think I know what things we need to fix. I'm really interested to see what the final results will be, so hopefully the next runs go smoothly.

The quiz on sensation and perception was probably the worst one for me yet, but t still wasn't horrible. I didn't get behind on reading, but I forgot to write down the vocabulary words for hearing so those questions were a little rough. I am excited to start working on our experiment replication, though. Star and I found a pretty interesting one, but there are some little things we still have to work out and we need to get one teachers approval yet. It will be kind of difficult to replicate in a school setting, but if everything goes as planned I am excited to see what the results will be. Hopefully we can get it done by the end of the week.

The homework this week was definitely a step up from last weeks work and gave everyone a good idea of the amount of work that is required of this class, I believe. At the beginning of the week, I was excited to get down to business with the reading and start to learn about the physical brain. I have always had a very strong interest in the brain's processes, so the reading was not bad to me most of the time. Modules 14/15, however, were a little rough. It was difficult to wrap my mind around how heritability works. I found it very amazing, though, how twins who are separated at birth and go decades without knowing each other turn out to be extremely similar. I always knew that genetics obviously play a huge role in who we are and that identical twins have the same genes so they must be incredibly similar, but I assumed that the environment we are raised in has nearly as much effect. I thought this because when you spend a lot of time with another person, you tend to pick up certain things that they do such as sayings and other mannerisms. I figured if it is that easy to become like the people we are surrounded by, then a great amount of our personality could be contributed to our surroundings. This is why I was kind of shocked when I read about how little our parents/siblings have to do with who we become. Most kids are surrounded by their family more than anyone when they grow up, so it only seems logical to believe that they would develop similar traits to their family members. Reading about this made me more interested in the whole nature vs. nurture debate. I realize now why it is such a big topic in the psychology field.

Blog 2- First Test

The test today went really well. I studied a lot since Dreier made us freak out so much by saying everyone was going to fail. I went through all of the multiple choice questions in the book and checked my answer with a key I found online to make sure I was understanding everything. This proved to be very helpful because several of the questions on the test were taken directly from those book questions. I know know that I should study them for every test since knowing the answers saved me a lot of time on the test. At the end of the multiple choice test, there were two questions I circled because I was not overly confident in my answers. I ended up getting 2 wrong, but I am really happy with that score considering the harsh warnings. I was most worried for the free response question, however I think I did okay. I feel as though I definitely wrote too much, but I am confident that I had a pretty solid understanding on all of the topics asked about (operational definitions, ethics, validity, etc.) I am concerned that I did not provide good examples, though. I was too scared to stray away from the given topic (since it was already too long.) Overall, I am very satisfied with the outcome of the test (so far) and hope that I can keep my grade up.

Throughout this course, I expect to learn a lot about how the brain works in a physical sense (the structure, biology, chemical mechanisms, etc.) as well as a mental one (thinking, perception, memory, etc.). I hope to end with a better understanding of how the structure and scientific processes in the brain are connected to those mental processes. I feel as though we live our lives without thinking about what drives us to do and think certain things, but that being aware of actions such as these are very important to understanding ourselves. This is why I am hoping that this course will lead to my being more conscious of my thoughts and actions on a daily basis.

The assigned reading gave a very thorough introduction to the basis of psychology. It was very eye-opening to read about all of the different careers in the psychological field. It is a common misunderstanding in our society that all psychologists work in an office with a couch where clients lay all day to spill out all of their feelings, however this vision couldn't be further from the truth (in most cases). While some psychologists work to help patients sort through their feelings and thoughts, they do so much more than that and can work in an endless number of settings. Also, I never realized that statistics play a big role in psychological research. I took AP Statistics last year, so seeing the topics that I learned about in that class connect to another subject (that seems like an entire different world than stats) is compelling. I feel as though I will get to use that previous knowledge and apply it to a more real-world subject- considering it is much easier to personally connect to psychology than statistics. Overall, the reading was already very thought- provoking. I am interested to continue on to learn more about the brain specifically.