Week 1, The Basics

Week one of psychology was an interesting one. I came into this class with expectations to learn about my brain and how it works. My fiancé is in psychology, so I knew the topic had to be somewhat interesting.

I am not very good with lecture classes, so initially I felt the class was going to be somewhat boring for me. Our teacher helped my opinion sway away from that somewhat though with some group time.

There was a lot of terminology thrown around; some of it stuck while some of it did not. There was a decent amount that stuck with me though. One of the things the teacher discusses early on was the reason why we doing things. And the main reason we do things is because of reward. This was an interesting one for me because I really only do things if I can get some sort of benefit from it. I often do things for my fiancé or family though just to do it because it’s them, but if someone else asked such a thing from me I would probably find a reason to not do it. The teacher asked me to think what I got in return; my conclusion was their love in return.

I feel the reason this may be is because when I was younger I had to take care of my parents sometimes because of being homeless and or the constant fighting between them. I remember one time I kept my mother from throwing a lamp at my father. No one ever asked me to do these things, nor was I rewarded in my mind for them.

I found the whole thing about how certain things are measurable to be interesting. I remember times I would have to babysit my brother and he would always get upset because my mom wasn’t home, and that the intensity and duration would be quite long; it was very hard to settle him down.

Finally hearing about nature vs nurture is quite interesting for me. The teacher gave an example about a child in an orphanage, and how it would be the only one not sick because at night the cleaning lady would pick it up and give it attention. Nature vs nurture is an interesting concept and I hope to learn more about it.

There were a lot of things I learned week one, but there were also a lot of things that went in one ear and out the other. Next class I plan on trying to pay attention more so that I can have more to write about.