Final Assessment of Introduction to Psychology 1301 - D

Well, it's the end of the semester and my I have learned from this course!




Coming into this class, I found myself not knowing really anything about Psychology or why people were the way that they were or the reason why people thought the way that they do, or behave the way that they behave. There were seven modules that opened up my eyes to the realm of psychology. These seven modules impacted me personally and professionally, meaning that they affected the way that I perceive myself and the way that I look at my calling in life, and how I am going to go about becoming a counselor if that is what I am supposed to do. I know that God has called me to counseling ministry, but I am unsure if I am supposed to get my Master's degree in clinical counseling or just take the knowledge that I have gained from this class and the rest of my college career to bring Him glory elsewhere in other ways. I am still trying to figure my life out, but this class has pointed me in the direction of a door that has been opened to me. I really enjoyed this class because of that reason. Let me tell you about it.




Module 1: Getting to Know Me




In this module, I was able to share a little about myself and my testimony. I lost my biological father to suicide when I was nine years old, and during that time I was at a stage in my life where I was going into early adolescence. My body wasn't quite changing yet, but my mind and thoughts were. I remember feeling as though there was nowhere to go like I was lost and didn't know where to turn. At such a young age, I found myself thinking of things that no child should ever think about their involvement in the flourishing or dying of a relationship. I considered whether or not I was the cause of his death. I know now that that was silly of me to think, but I didn't know how to process the pain I was going through at the time. This module really gave me the opportunity to share a little bit about myself and hear encouraging things back from my other classmates. This module also provided me with a list of true/false questions about psychology that really helped me to see what I did and didn't know about psychology as a whole. It was extremely interesting to see how much I didn't know about it. This module was more of an introduction to the course, but it was a truly helpful introduction.




Module 2: Brain, Sensation, and Perception




This is a video on which I wrote a blog post:

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gartenberg_the_brain_benefits_of_deep_sleep_and_how_to_get_more_of_it






The brain is the control center for everything that we do. How we see, taste, feel, smell, and hear things are all based on how our brain interprets information. I found that simple fact to be mindblowing when I delved into this module. The way that we perceive anything and everything depends on how our brain works. Since we all are different, we all will perceive and sense things differently. Taste, for instance, is highly subjective. The way that I taste something like a tomato will be different for someone who actually likes tomatoes. I hate them. The same is true for how we hear things and see, smell, and touch things. Some people enjoy the scratching sound that fingernails on a chalkboard makes, while others find it disgusting. It's all a matter of perception and how each of our brains works. I learned about how much of our brain works during the day and how much works during the night. Our brains do not shut down when our bodies do after a long day's work. Our brains continue to work through the night preparing us for the next day. Dreaming is a function of our brain during the night. I found this module very interesting. After each module's readings, we were assigned an experiential task. These experiential tasks were designed to give us hands-on experience with the topic that we were learning about during that week. During this module, the experiential tasks that I chose to do was the task of reaction time and how each one of the brains in the experiment was different in perception and sensation displayed in the differences between reaction times. Here are a couple of videos to show what I did:






https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t5p8a0sgrQ





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53oOJa62vgk






Here are the results of the experiment:










JC Longoria








Preston Antunez







Kevin Cooper







Module 3: Developmental Psychology and Personality




Developmental Psychology and Personality was one of the modules that I knew the most about. While it was about development across a lifespan and personality, the section on personality really stuck out to me.




I was home-schooled from 7th grade through 12th grade, so five years. The reason I mention that because I had a class that I don't believe was taught anywhere else, at least that I knew of in high school. I took a class that's main focus was on personality and how people develop their personalities. I guess it was like an elective or something, but I really enjoyed it. we were required to take a personality test (Myers-Briggs). I found out that I was an ISFJ. I was introverted, but at the time I had no idea what that meant. After that semester, I became extremely interested in what it meant to be introverted. As high school went on, I took what I had learned about my personality and actually realized that I showed all the signs of a true introvert. Sometimes I wish that I had not been introverted, it could have saved me a lot of trouble presenting things and talking to girls or just talking at all. I was a quiet guy. Anyways, I learned what it was to be an ISFJ and I embraced it. This module did help me realize that there are a lot of people like me. the experiential task that I chose to work on for that week was a character analysis of someone that I knew. I chose the person I was closest to, my brother. I remember this exercise was really fun. I love my brother. We are best friends. It was interesting to find that Kyle (my brother) and I were so similar. He is an ISFJ as well. The character analysis' goal was to determine how other people perceive Kyle, and then to see how my perception of Kyle differed from everyone else's. Here is a picture of Kyle:











He looks extroverted, I know. Others actually thought that Kyle was extroverted. One thing that surprised me about Kyle, is that he is very much introverted, but if he has to come out of his shell he can. He is definitely more introverted than he is extroverted, but he can be extremely outgoing if he needs to be. His current job demands a lot of energy from him, but he still needs some time alone. Here is my personal assessment of Kyle's character:




Introversion: Kyle is introverted. He doesn't shut down when around people that he does not know, but I can tell when he feels uncomfortable. His introversion shows in ways like, sometimes getting restless when in groups, or the early preparation to leave from gatherings.




Sensing: Kyle does like to imagine things and discuss theories, but when it comes to facts he wants practical information. He does not prefer hypotheticals as opposed to the truth.




Feeling: Even though Kyle may need concrete information before making decisions, he does consider others' feelings in the matter. How the action might affect others or himself, and many times he will make decisions based on the feelings that he experiences more than anything else. Similar to the "Person-Situation Debate".




Judging: Kyle is the type of person who schedules out his time and considers the outcome of his time spent, before spending it. He wants to make sure no time is wasted when things need to get done. He has always been this way. Though he may not always be well-organized, he takes everything into consideration before acting.






This is almost exactly how I am. Maybe that is why we get along so well. I found this module of extreme importance to my professional career should I choose to follow professional counseling. It was extremely insightful and gave me lots to think about.




Module 4: Learning and Memory




I found this module to be one that was highly entertaining to learn about. I love learning about how other people learn. I like to see how different people actually are, and how many different ways there are to learn. One of the first things that I read about in this module, was the concept of Conditional Learning. Conditional Learning can be seen when you look at trained dogs. Some pet owners will train their dogs to know when it is time to eat, by the sound of a bell. The bell itself is the conditioned stimulus, while the food is the unconditioned stimulus. When the dog hears the bell, he will automatically know that it is time to eat, and in many cases, if there is no food present the dog will salivate. This is a huge method of learning for people today. In the case of driving, when we see a green light, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are supposed to go. The same is true with a red light; we know that we are to stop. It is also visible when payday comes around every week, or sometimes every two weeks, at least for me. I know when I am to be paid, and when payday comes, my response is to automatically check my bank account for money transferal.




Learning has a lot to do with our memory too!






Memory is one of the most amazing things about the human mind. It can be one of the most helpful things to us, but a memory, many times can be one of the misleading things that we deal with. There have been cases when people have had a crime committed against them, and they swore that they knew who the perpetrator was when given a "line-up". They selected who they remembered, only to find out years after the person has been sentenced that they chose wrong. An example of this can be seen in these two videos:




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-SBTRLoPuo




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4V6aoYuDcg






I had a conversation with my Step-Dad about this concept of false memory, and we cam to the conclusion that both of us have experienced the creation of false memories in our own lives. He remembers thing very differently than the way that they actually occurred, but then again I do the same thing sometimes. This probably has a lot to do with the way that our brains perceive certain events. Traumatic experiences affect people in so many different ways, and with my dad and I we probably remember the events based on how they made us feel more than anything else.




A cool experiment that I tried on my dad was to have him write a list of words that all related to one sing word, without having him write the word that the others were being related to. In this case, my dad wrote all the ones that he remembered, and in fact, he wrote the full list and the word that all the others related to. The exercise was to see if he would create a false memory of me saying that word. For example, I had him write: pin, prick, straw, haystack, point, sewing, doctor, nurse, pain, injection, shot. The word that he was not supposed to write was "needle". If he wrote the full list including the word "needle", then his mind created a false memory of me saying, needle.






Module 5: Motivation and Emotion and Social Psychology






Schacter's Two-Factor Theory of Emotion really helped me to understand why I feel the way that I feel and gave me some rationale for my emotions. The theory states that there are multiple factors that work together to create each emotion. For instance, happiness. Happiness is an emotion that has more than one factor at play, when I see my mom for the first time in a while, my heart seems to jump or beat faster than normal. My thought about what I am feeling can be described as happiness. Then the emotion that comes out of it is Joy.




I think emotion is generally universal. People all have emotion whether good or bad. People react differently to things, but there is still emotion at play. Despite different reaction, I think fear is the same for all people. I remember my first feeling of being afraid. I remember I had just finished watching the first installment of The Lord of the Rings (the first time that I had seen it without closing my eyes when the orcs appeared), I was going to my room to get ready for bed, and in my house, we had this long hallway that led to my room. It was dark. I, to this day, have fear of entering dark areas, not because they are dark, but because of this experience. Anyways, I was walking down the hallway, and we had a bathroom that was to my right. The door was open, but it was pitch black. I couldn't see anything, but I felt that something was there. I couldn't dare to even look in, so I ran past it. Once I started running, the fear grew. My heart began to race and I felt as if something was chasing me. Nothing was there, but it felt like there was because of the way that my mind was interpreting the situation. I have had other similar experiences with seemingly supernatural "entities" as well. The same emotions have flooded my mind. Fear. It's scary. When I watched the lecture videos, I learned that I don't know exactly how to read people's expressions. After almost every example of a facial expression, I found myself getting them wrong. I guess I need to work on that.






Social Psychology is how we interact with and determine things about each other. Non-Verbal communication is a huge factor in social psychology. Facial expressions and gestures give us the ability to give judgment upon people and help us to discern things about others. This can be extremely helpful in the counseling career. Judging by the way that people act, you can tell a lot. This can help a counselor determine what a patient needs if the patient struggles to speak or is in fear of doing so. I learned a lot about interactions with others from this module and the lecture videos.




Module 6: Psychological Disorders and Therapy


This module was a real eye-opener for me. This module was about a select few of the various differing psychological disorders around the world, namely, Anxiety, Depression, and Suicide as a result. I was amazed at the statistics of disorders in the United States, and even more-so that I was a part of that statistic. I struggle with both anxiety and depression, to a lesser extent. I never considered anxiety to be a disorder honestly. I still wonder though if disorders can be learned behaviors. I say that because my Step-Dad had OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) and Tourettes, both very obvious; I feel, as a result of his having OCD, that I now have it as a learned behavior. I find myself having strong urges to have things a certain way. One of the diagrams in this module showed that one in every four people suffer from a psychological disorder. That is just astounding! I feel like it is quite the opposite in my family. four out of four people in my immediate family struggle with at least one of these mentioned in this module.

The therapies mentioned in the module seemed rather simple, but helpful nonetheless. I enjoyed watching a video about service dogs. Link Below...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCXTa5BxeOU&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnh1tYsgG3c&feature=youtu.be

These videos gave very interesting testimony to the fact that dogs help with anxiety and PTSD. I remember when I had dogs, I was a much calmer individual with less emotional issues. Dogs bring a sense of peace to any situation.


Module 7: Positive Psychology

The final module of the semester was that of positive psychology. This module really assisted me in bettering myself with some effort. One main topic of this module was "Gratitude". Gratitude is everywhere, but just like anything else I have talked about, it is expressed in different ways. For example, I tend to want to tell someone exactly what I am thinking about them at the moment (all good things). I want to tell them how appreciative I actually am, whether that be through face to face contact (preferably) or through writing. I love making people feel appreciated. I think it's healthy for both parties. I love to encourage people too. The hardest part about encouragement is finding out how to encourage someone else when I cannot figure out how to encourage myself. If I can't think positively of myself, then am I truly thinking positively of others? I think Jesus says something about that... Love your neighbor... That was a commandment to love ourselves too. I struggle immensely trying to love myself. But, this module really helped me to see myself as someone else.


I wrote a letter of encouragement to myself about this final week of the semester. I can now say that after that letter, my view on life has changed. I am more positive when I talk about myself. I no longer beat myself up and bully myself because I think I deserve it. I think of myself as a child, loved fully by God. I definitely recommend that exercise to anyone that is struggling with loving themselves. Such a positive outcome. This is definitely something that I will recommend to my friends and family who find themselves in a rough spot. When or if I become a Grief Counselor, I'm going to take what I have learned in this class to heart and use it to develop my counseling skill.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed taking this class. Everything I learned about was right up my alley. I learned so much about how the human mind works and how to apply the material to my personal life and someday my professional life and career. I recommend this course to anyone that is considering a career in counseling or any psychological career otherwise. It was extremely helpful to me and it will be to you.