--Original published at Olivia's College Blog

Hello everyone! My name is Olivia Gerstenbacher and I am a sophomore psychology major. I am taking intro psych out of interest and for fulfilling major requirements. I was a biology major until the start of this semester; my background consists of one social psychology course that sparked my interest last year.

When I hear the word “psychology”, I think of human interactions and reactions. I automatically associate the word with human behaviors and become curious to learn how they are related to our environment.

I am most interested in the topics “How to Make Memories”, “Stereotypes and Discrimination” and “Classifying Mental Illness”. Memory formation interests me because it could be a useful tool for helping my studying strategies. Stereotyping and discrimination seem especially relevant in society today, and will be intriguing to unravel. Learning about mental illness concerns the branch of psychology that I am considering to pursue farther down the road.

I am least interested in “Psychology Then & Now”, “Scientific Method”, and “Why Research Design Matters”. To me, these topics seem the least enticing since they focus more on the history of the field. Although I am looking forward to other concepts more, I understand how crucial it is to have the background information on a subject that we will only be brushing the surface on in this class.

By the end of this class, I would like to know more about our implicit biases and how they influence our daily decisions and assumptions.

I am looking forward to this class and all of the new material that welcomes me to the major.

--Original published at Liam's blog

My name is Liam McCommons and I’m taking psychology 105 because it seemed interesting. When it comes to psychology I don’t really have any kind of background in it. When I hear the word psychology I think of Dr. Sydney Freedman, who was a fictional psychologist on the tv show M*A*S*H. The three topics that interest me most are: Personality and Culture, because I think it’d be interesting to see how our culture shapes our personalities. Group dynamics, because It may show how to better interact with others in a group setting. and finally How to Get Good Sleep, I’m interested in this one because I tend not to sleep very well and would like any advice I can get on how to do it better. The three that interest me the least are: How we make memories, mostly because its not something I’ve ever thought about. Chemicals and Consciousness, I’m honestly not sure what its going to be about so it doesn’t peak my interest. And obedience which just doesn’t sound that exciting. The question I have about psychology is where is it heading.

--Original published at MaddieHinson

Hi, my name is Maddie Hinson. I am a Junior Business Administration major with a double concentration in management and marketing. Honestly, I hadn’t even considered taking psychology until about a week ago. One of my classes had gotten cancelled and I needed a replacement, and this one happened to fit in my schedule. Although it wasn’t my first choice, I think this is something that is going to benefit me in the future. Psychology seems to be embedded in many areas of business, especially with marketing. I had a class last year in marketing, and we would have discussions about why we choose certain products over others, and a lot of it had to do with psychology. I had taken a psychology class in high school and my teacher was phenomenal at giving examples to go along with the concepts and she just made it a positive experience for me.

The first thing I think of when I hear the word “psychology” is the brain. We all have brains but there are parts of them that make us all different, and that is intriguing to me. I think it’s also kind of crazy how if the brain gets injured, the person it belongs to could act completely different than how they did before the injury. Concussions have been a big area in sports, mainly in football, and I think that’s something worth studying and paying more attention to.

Looking over the syllabus, I think the section about memory is something that I am eager to get to. I think it’s weird how there are certain parts of our life that we can never forget no matter how hard we try, and then other things we try so hard to remember and can’t seem to. I also think the coping with stress is a topic that I would be interested in. Everyone has stress, and I think it’s interesting to hear how differently we all deal with it. The third topic that I’m excited to study is personalities. Over the course of my life, I have come to now myself pretty well and how I operate, but I think it is a useful tool to be able to figure out how other people work, especially in the business world.

A topic that I am not thrilled to be studying is, Psychology Then and Now. I do believe it is important to learn about history, I am just not a fan of it. I also am not big on talking about emotions, for the sole reason that I am not great at describing my own ones. Lastly, the subcortical brain section seems like there could be a lot of memorization that goes with it, so I’m not too excited about it.

By the end of this class, I would like to know how we use this knowledge that we have gained about humans to help better ourselves and those around us. To me, learning something isn’t the reason we go to school, it’s what we do with what we have learned that makes it count.

--Original published at WilliamsCollegeBlog

My name is Will Schoener, and I am a sophomore, Industrial Engineering major. Also, I am on the cross country and track teams at E-town. For this class, I’m ready to study certain principles about how the brain and our bodies function.

I chose this class because it is part of the specific kind of engineering at the college. I currently have no background of any kind in psychology. When I here “psychology”, I think of brain functionality and how people behave.

 Three topics that I find most interesting would be “Why do we Forget,” “Personality Theory,” and “Theories of Intelligence”. Personally, these three topics are relatable to me. Based on the title, it would be interesting to learn why I might forget certain ideas. Everyone has different personalities and the topic seems to be based on how people acquire certain personalities. Intelligence is very important, and I would like to learn more about it. My three least interesting topics are “Observational Learning,” “How to get Good Sleep,” and “Coping with Stress”. All three of these just seem to be topics where I have knowledge of already through other kinds of classes.

I would like to answer – What makes people react the way they do to stress/ other stimuli? 6

--Original published at Voltage Blog

My name is Chris Voltz and I am a freshman information systems major. I just recently returned to Elizabethtown College from a two year medical leave. I have always been fascinated by the inner workings of everything. I am taking psychology 105 in order to better understand what people do and the reasons why they do them. Psychology always was an interest to me throughout high school, but I was never able to fit it into my schedule then. When someone mentions the word “psychology,” I think of emotions and the reasons behind the actions they do. A lot of time I find myself questioning why someone just did that. By taking this course, I am hoping to better understand human behavior. I am most interested in learning about the attachment theory, how to improve memory, and why we forget. My mom and I both have really bad memory and laugh at each other sometimes trying to remember simple words sometimes like a salt shaker. Throughout the course, I am hoping to learn more on the reasoning behind this. The three topics I am least interested in are assessing intelligence, personality assessment, and obedience. All the topics seem interesting to me, so I chose three that I think will be the least enjoyable for me. My first question about psychology that I am hoping will be answered by the end is what affects memory? Also, I am hoping to figure out how people decide certain things over others. Thank you for reading my post and I am looking forward to this class.

--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.

--Original published at Allison's Psych Blog

My name is Allison Velardi and I am a freshman occupational therapy major. I grew up in New Jersey, and moved to Delaware when I was seven years old. The most background in psychology that I have was an AP Psych course I took my junior year of high school, and I really struggled with it. I am taking this class now because it is required for my major, but also because I find psychology really interesting. When I think of psychology, I think of mental health and serial killers honestly. Those are the two areas that interest me the most, so they are what I automatically think of. Because of this, I believe that I will be most interested in the mental illness and personality disorders sections, and the classical conditioning as well, because I really enjoyed learning about that a few years ago, and did really well with it. I think learning about the brain will be tedious for me, seeing as I have been over it at least three times already between psych and two anatomy courses in high school. I was also not the biggest fan of the personality section, because I feel like I know myself pretty well, and am not very interested in looking too deep into it. The theories of intelligence also does not seem like something I would be particularly interested in, but we never know! I guess I really just want to get a more detailed explanation of what psychology is and why it’s so important for occupational therapy.

--Original published at Ariana's Blog

Hi! My name is Ariana Serillo and I am a freshman Occupational Therapy major. I grew up in Whippany NJ and graduated at Whippany Park High School. I am loving my time at Elizabethtown College so far. 

I am taking this course because I need it to continue on in the occupational therapy program. With that being said, I am excited to take this class because I think it will be very interesting to learn about. I do not have much experience in psychology other than Human Development, which was a class I took in high school. This class just scratched the surface of psychology.

When I think of psychology, I think of people going to therapy to work out issues in their life. I also think of certain mental disorders and why people act the way they do in different situations.

Three topics that I am interested to learn about is Traumatic and Personality Disorders. I have done research on some personality disorders in high school and found them very interesting, so I would like to see it explained from a psychology standpoint. Mood Disorders and Anxiety also sounds interesting because I have anxiety when it comes to certain things and I would like to know why that is. Lastly, I am excited to learn about Coping with Stress. Three topics that I am less interested in are the Scientific Method, Research, and Experiments. Those topics just don’t appeal to me as much as the other topics we are covering later in the semester. 

By the end of this class, I would like to know what establishes a personality and also how to successfully cope with the stress we have in our lives on a daily basis. I am looking forward to a great semester.

--Original published at Ben's PSY105 Blog

My name is Ben Brown. I grew up on the Jersey shore, spending my summers working on the boardwalk, right next to the same bars where Snooki and Mike “The Situation” spent their evenings. Surprisingly, I have never gotten into the habit of tanning and pumping my fist, nor my gas for that matter. I spent most of my free time playing soccer. I also spent a fair portion of my free time at Boy Scouts. I achieved the rank of Eagle Scout. I’m a sophomore industrial engineering major.

My future is going to be based around making people and processes more efficient. Psychology is going to play a major role in whatever job I may find myself having. Taking this class will hopefully get a basic understanding of the subject which could help me in my future.

In high school, I signed up to take a psychology class, but I did not last more than two weeks. I was convinced the teacher had something against me. When she graded my life goals assignment, she gave me an F because she did not think my goals were achievable. On top of the grading, she threatened to give me detention when I smiled at a friend of mine in the class after a joke. I wish I could have stayed in the class longer to have more knowledge coming into this course.

When I think of psychology, I think of the mind. As an engineer, my first instinct when learning something new is almost always to ask myself why it works in the way it does. My goal for this class is to have a better understanding of why the mind works the way it does.

As the semester goes on, I will be most excited to learn about mental illnesses, stress and coping mechanisms, and all about sleep. I believe these subjects will be most relevant to my everyday life, especially as a college student. There are not really any topics which I see as uninteresting, but I am least excited to learn about conditioning, intelligence, and trauma. To me, these appear to be the subjects most likely to trip me up.

--Original published at Emily's college blog

Hello, my name is Emily! I am a first-year Biology-Allied Health major and I am from Baltimore, Maryland. I am taking this course because it is a requirement for my major but also because I am interested on how the brain works and want to find out why people do certain things. This is my first psychology class so I do not really have any background on this subject. When I hear the word “psychology”, I think of “the study of the brain”. The three topics that look the most interesting to me are mood disorder & anxiety, psychotic, traumatic & personality disorders, and how to make memories. I would like to be more knowledgable on what happens in the brain to cause mental illnesses and disorders and also I think it would be interesting to learn how and why the brain stores certain memories. The three topics that look the least interesting to me are psychology then & now, classical conditioning, and observational learning. I am not as interested on how psychology has changed over the years and I also do not know anything about conditioning or observational learning. A question that I would like to know by the end of this psychology class would be “How do our mind-body functions effect our emotions?”.