--Original published at JanellesCollegeBlog

My name is Janelle Nolt. I am a first-year student at Elizabethtown, and I will be majoring in occupational therapy with a possible minor in Spanish. I am from Landisville, PA which is about 30 minutes from the college. I have played field hockey since sixth grade and I am a part of the team here as well. I am excited to build on my knowledge of psychology in this course.

The first reason I am taking this class is because it is required for my major. I am glad it is required for my major because I think it is important to learn about. I am also taking the class because I took a general psychology class in high school and enjoyed the content.

My background in psychology comes from the class I was able to take in high school. Although it was a general class, I felt like much of it was focused on mental health. We also talked briefly about some famous psychologists and their experiments.

When I hear the word “psychology” I think of emotions and feelings. More specifically, why people think the way they do. Also, because it is so prevalent today, I also associate psychology with mental health.

Several of the topics on the course schedule caught my attention when I read through the syllabus. One of them was cognitive development. I think it is interesting to learn about the typical way people’s minds work. Also, I hope to someday work with children, so this will be important for me to understand. Another topic I think looks interesting is how to improve memory. I did not know there were ways we can do this, so I am excited to learn a lot about this topic. The final topic that looks interesting to me is the mechanics of sleep. Sleep is interesting to me because it is something that is a part of my daily routine, but I do not spend much time thinking about. I am excited to spend week 8 learning about this.

There are also some topics on the syllabus that do not look as interesting to me. One of these is the scientific method. I was able to learn about the scientific method through other classes, so this will unfortunately not be as new to me as some of the other topics. Another topic that does not look as interesting to me is coping with stress. I feel like we are readily handed strategies to deal with stress because of the health risks it imposes. I believe I could learn about some news ways of coping with stress through this class though. The final topic on the syllabus that does not look interesting to me is obedience. I feel like this topic is also reiterated a lot, therefore I am not sure how much new content it will include.

By the end of this class I would like to understand more about how different mental illnesses effect a person’s brain function and structure.