Week 7

Week 7 was all about problems in the brain, at least from my point of view. We learned about phobias and schizophrenia. I have never really had any phobias much during my life other than being afraid of monsters and the dark when I was younger but that is more of a childhood thing. On the other hand schizophrenia definitely caught my attention.

My father had schizophrenia; although I have no idea what type he definitely had problems with certain parts of his brain. I remember a story of him not paying at Eat’n Park because he thought he was Jesus and did not have to pay.

In class we learned different types of schizophrenia and what they entail. I thought the one that is most scary would be either tactile or visual even though the auditory seems to be the worst from studies. I find it would drive me insane to feel like things were crawling on my skin or to see things that were not really there.

I hope that schizophrenia is something more that one develops than is hereditary because I would really rather not have any type of schizophrenia. As the teacher said don’t think that I am going to have it because sometimes it can actually increase of odds of getting it.

Definitely looking forward to the next 2 weeks since they seem to include a lot of interesting topics including alcohol, gambling and adhd.

Week 6

Week 6 was a fun yet interesting week due to the fact we were learning about advertising. Although we did learn about group mechanics, I had much more interest with the advertising. We learned about the variety parts of advertising that relate to psychology. One of the most important things I feel advertising does is relates to lifestyles. It sometimes even makes people want to change their lifestyle to fit in with a certain brand. One thing this that this was really noticeable in was cigarette adds. Even though I’m not a smoker myself I find it interesting how these ads are directed at different types of people. For a while these ads were making millions until they were banned from television in the us permanently because they were getting younger people’s attention.

We all split into groups and all found a commercial to explain to the class, which I thought was a great way to interpret the commercials and how they relate to psychology. The initial commercial I thought of was the old spice commercials, but I overheard that one of the other groups was going to do it. It actually ended up two groups doing that brand and 2 separate commercials. Our group ended up doing an Xbox 360 Commercial which I thought actually did not represent the brand very well even though it was a captivating commercial. I felt that it did not brand the image of Xbox in one’s head yet just be an overall fun and interesting commercial.

I learned some and reinforced a lot of what I know about what’s behind advertising and I feel it was an overall interesting week. I look forward to see what the group project has in store for me.

Week 4 Psychology

Week 4 I feel has been the most interesting week in the psychology class to date. Week 4 was about the brain again, but more about senses, She told us that there were 7 senses and said she would tell us the 2 we didn’t know and they ended up being proprioception and the vestibular sense. Maybe ill look into them more another time; since ometimes I feel my properceptive sense may be a bit off, I like to bump into things but that may be just because I am a big guy.

One thing we talked about was the trinity of the human brain; the idd, ego, and super ego. The idd which is the uncouncious part; I want what I want when I want it, reminds me a lot about myself. And somewhat deals with being impulsive. Something that I need to work on is waiting a second before I say things after listening to someone. A lot of times I will just spurt something out.

We talked about a lot of things relating to the left and right brain, and I found out that I am mostly right brained which was somewhat interesting.

The teacher talked about how an enviorment can psycially change the brain which to me seems like a really bad thing. One thing that was mentioned was that ritilin affects the development of the brain and I know I was on that for a while as a child.But hopefully it didn’t impact my brain all that much.

We did an interesting thing on learning. We answered a bunch of questions on visual auditory and kinesthectic learning. I found out that auditory was my highest yetI feel that kinesthetic should be because I love doing things instead of hearing about them.

We watched an interesting clip on Ben underwood who learned to see with sound which to me kind of sounds like how dolphins see. It was a shame to find out that he died though.

Overall It was a very filled week of knowledge, should be interesting to see what peoples midterm projects are next week.

week 3

Week 3 was an interesting week because I had my class split up due to previous engagements. What was even more interesting was that I had 2 different teachers during these 2 days.

Week 3 was primarily about stress and what cause it along with how to prevent it and how to cope with it. I find stress can really cause a toll on me when it gets bad. I end up taking it out on other people and I definitely don’t operate at 100%. I find myself getting stressed sometimes with school, especially when I have a big project coming up or quiz. I usually do things at the last second which is my weakness and this usually leads to long and stressful nights. I think an easy way to fix this would be to work on projects a little bit every day or every other day. That would definitely help to relieve stress.

In class the teacher discusses stress relieving techniques, one of them being deep breathing which I find myself rarely doing but the other was music which I do use. I used to never listen to music but soon after high school I found myself listening to it a lot more; maybe because life after high school was more stressful? A lot of times I listen to music while I work on school work, which I think helps me work more efficiently and prevent a stressful situation. I also find that exercising regularly helps reduce overall stress.

The teacher mentioned 2 things that caught my attention; one is someone always being negative and the other is having a hard time saying no to people. These two things are easily 2 heavy stressors.

I think if I could overcome these two things that I would have a much overall better time in life. I think the negative part comes from my father, mainly biological in my opinion but who knows. As for never saying no, I think that comes from my adoptive family teaching me manners and being nice. I seem to never want to have confrontation. But sometimes it is a good thing to say no.

The second part of week 3 was interesting and I think the sub teacher was a very good lecturer and kept my attention very well. Week 3.5 was about how we perceive reality and how perception is always the end result of a complex process of selection and interpretation. I thought it was interesting how we have filters that reduce the sensory stimuli so that we don’t have to interpret everything that happens around us; Sort of like in one ear out the other.

Overall an interesting lecture and look forward to next week’s where we learn more about the brain.