Final Blog

       This class has really taught me a lot about psychology and has made me think way outside the box on different topics.  Over the course of this year, I wrote fifteen blogs about various topics.  The first blog that I wrote was about myself and how I feel about Hardin-Simons University and how I would compare myself to natural things.  The next blog I wrote was about my interest in psychology which is pretty self-explanatory, but if not, it was about my fear of dogs and the reason I am scared of them.  I really want to figure out why I am afraid and if it can be fixed.  The third blog that I did was about the brain and how your behavior is affected by different parts of the brain.  Your brain is an amazing organ which can do many, many things that are very impressive.  The next blog was about sensation and perception and how the brain and body perceive it.  Next on the list of blogs is the one about how music affects the brain in positive and negative ways.  Here, I made a video and had my friend Cossette in it because she is in the choir and I felt that she knows a lot about music.  My next blog is about nature-nature which “is a debate within psychology concerning particular aspects of behavior are a reason for either inherited or acquired characteristics.”  The following blog is a character study over my boyfriend Cole.  The eighth blog that I wrote was over Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychology because he is considered the father of psychology.  The ninth blog was about different types of learning and how they impact the student to help them learn.  The next blog is about a persons ability to remember stuff and how Alzheimer’s Disease which inhibits the memory significantly.  This is where a persons memory starts fading, first the short term and then it works its way to the long-term memory until nothing is left.  The next blog was titled Behavior Modification Exercise which was where I made a schedule to help me focus more and procrastinate less.  It actually helped me a lot for a few weeks.  My next blog was about multiculturalism, which I did on the way I grew up and how it affected me in the long run.  My third to the last blog was an interview with two people that had the same mental illness, PTSD.  Two different people with the same disease that affects them in two different ways.  The following blog is about active listening where I interviewed five people along the course of the week.  This is where I listened to them and had deep conversations with each one.  The last and final blog also about my Boyfriend Cole and how he is a healthy person in the six dimensions that we discussed in class.

        A few of the blogs that really stood out to me were the interview about Cole, the interview over the two people with PTSD, and the blog about human memory and Alzheimer’s Disease.  These stood out to me because I enjoyed doing them and found them very interesting.  I learned a lot about the topics and the people I interviewed.  In the interview over Cole, I learned a lot of things that I did not know like how much he likes to help people out and goes out of his way to do so.  I also learned that he is just as big of a procrastinator as I am, but we both have good work ethic even with our procrastination skills.  The next blog that really stood out to me was the one where I interviewed the two people with PTSD.  I really learned how the same disease can affect people in different ways.  These two people went through a lot and were still able to tell me their story.  Both of these people are amazing and are making a great recovery and getting through their mental illness.  The third and final blog that really stood out to me was the one about Alzheimer’s disease.  I learned so much more about this disease and its effects on the mind throughout this essay.  This was a great experience for me and I enjoyed researching it.  All three of these blogs taught me so much and made me realize how far removed I was from the impact of mental illness and Alzheimer’s disease.

        One of the modules that stood out to me was the one about learning ability.  Learning is defined as “relatively permanent change in behavior or mental state caused by experience.”  In the learning module, it discussed how people learn and different types of learning that are used in today's world.  There are three main types of learning techniques, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and cognitive-social learning.  Classical conditioning is “a learning process that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired; a response which is at first elicited by the second stimulus is eventually elicited by the first stimulus alone.” (dictionary.com)  An example of this is if someone rings a bell every time before a dog is given food, at which the dog will salivate at sight, the dog will then begin to salivate just from the bell ringing.  Here the bell is the second stimulus, the food the first stimulus, and the dog salivating is the response.  Operant conditioning is when a person or subject is encouraged to behave in a certain way through positive or negative reinforcement.  An example of positive reinforcement is applauding someone for their good work and showing them recognition like giving someone an award for never showing up late for work.  Negative reinforcement is when you only get mad at someone when they do something bad and you punish them.  There is usually no recognition of the good work they have done, just punishment.  An example is when an employee is caught staying out for lunch an extra ten minutes and is punished.  But that same employee has been coming back from lunch ten minutes early every day for the past week to get more work done and was shown no recognition.  Cognitive-social learning is when someone learns something from watching other people do that same task.  An example of this could be someone learning how to back groceries from watching the people that work there do it.  Classical conditioning was thought of by Ivan Pavlov and John Watson, while operant conditioning was thought of by Edward Thorndike and BF Skinner.  Cognitive-social learning was then Albert Bandura’s brainchild.  This is what week seven, module four was about.  This module stood out because I found that it was very interesting and true on how animals and people learn.  We almost learn in the same way, it's just that human’s comprehension skills go way beyond that of animals.  I found it really neat in the ways that we learn.

In-class meetings were my favorite part of this course.  The class period that stood out to me was learning about the brain and when we learned about disorders. I thought the lesson about the brain and every little detail about it, gave me a better understanding how it works and why we react a certain way. The other class lesson about the disorders was also very insightful. When we talked about depression and watched all the videos about suicide, it made me see suicide in a different way. Watching the video of the guy who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge was very hard, but what really stuck to me was the part where he said, “As soon as I jumped off I instantly regretted it.” He was one of the very few survivors that commit this kind of suicide. The fact that he regretted it at the moment he had already done the deed, and after that changed the way he lived and viewed the world. The video completely had me thinking of all the people in my life who have committed suicide, and if they ever regretted it during the very limited time they had left before death.  The most interesting “student-led” Thursday activity was the most recent one we had about the different disorders, in movie clips.  I believe it was John’s activity. I liked how he showed the class a variety of movie clips we all were familiar with. 

        The blog post that I enjoyed doing the most would have to be the active listening blog.  This is the one where I got to talk to five different people throughout the week and just have a deep conversation with them and listen to what they were saying.  I got to listen to my mom, my dad, my sister, Cole, and my suit mate Cossette.  All had very interesting topics of discussion which can be seen on my blog titled Active Listening. 

        I remember while I was writing my first blog, About Me, I used Emelia Johnson’s blog to model mine after.  I found here blog organized and helpful to learn who she is as a person.  This was the first time for me to write a blog, so I wanted to look at someone else’s to see what I needed to do.  She kept her blog simple but included many details about herself and added a few pictures.  Looking at her blog really helped me get mine started and helped me know what a blog should look like.  Emelia Johnson’s blog was an encouraging blog for me and truly helped me out in my future blog structuring.  

        The video readings and the TedTalks, for me, really helped me.  I am not saying I watched every single one, but I did watch quite a few and they helped me understand what I was supposed to write about exponentially.  Of course, I did some of my own research on the side as well.  The videos the really stood out to me were the ones about memory and diseases that inhibit the mind from being one hundred percent.  These following videos (Video 1 and Video 2) really showed me that I really had no idea how or why these diseases affected the mind. 

I feel that the topic that was covered in this course that affects my personal life was the blog about behavior modification exercise.  Here I made a seven-day challenge to help me not procrastinate as much.  I have always known that I am a procrastinator, but I wanted to fix that.  So I made a weekly schedule that helps me not to procrastinate as much.  This has really helped me not wait until the last minute to finish my assignments.  Procrastination is defiantly one of my biggest weaknesses and I have seen improvement in the past few weeks by using this method that I came across while writing a blog.  One of my strengths that are improving because of this is my organizational skills.  I have always been organized, but this will help my schedule become even more organized.