Spotlight Blog 3

--Original published at KatieMillerPSY105

For this spotlight blog, I choose to address peer pressure and the effectiveness of recommendations to resist peer pressure. I wanted to see what recommendations websites promote as the best method to resist peer pressure and how these methods compare with what we learned in class. I found three different articles from web sources that discuss peer pressure resistance methods for college students, athletes and adults.

The first article I found is called “Resisting Peer Pressure in College” by Molly Dutmers on the Inpathy Bulletin website. This article provides insight into peer pressure faced by college students and describes that the college years actually have a significant amount of peer pressure on young adults. The article discusses that “everything you know is questioned” (paragraph 2) the moment that you step foot on campus. The primary reason for the change in college is the new people a student will meet who have different values, beliefs, religions, ethnic backgrounds and socioeconomic status. The college environment is one where people are exposed to new ideas, cultures and norms without the social institutions that they grew up with. Expectations are also set high for college in that it is supposed to be “the best four years of your life,” and the pressure to enjoy the college experience is very high (paragraph 3). With pressure to fit in with a new group, there may be instances where normative social influence will be high. In situations with new roommates and classmates, I may feel a stronger tendency to go along with behaviors even if I don’t necessarily believe that these actions are right.

The article provides some examples on avoiding compliance by holding onto values that you believe are right and to associate with people who have a similar moral compass (paragraph 8). I believe that this advice can be implemented as I start my college process. While I will be attending a school that is quite different from my background (urban setting vs. Central Pennsylvania, diverse student body with different races, religions and beliefs vs. a more homogenous environment), I was fortunate enough to find roommates with similar values and morals. Before selecting our roommates, we took mini profile tests to determine our preferences for people to live with. After finding people with similar interests, we then were able to have further discussions with potential roommates. I was able to have honest conversations with these students on their views on partying and other recreational activities. Since not all of us were in agreement on these behaviors, the group then split into different rooms based on their personal preferences. While I believe that college is a great opportunity to engage in new experiences, I do not want to go against my beliefs. I can still be friends with others who have different behaviors, and I will not judge them for their choices. However, I do want to be sure that I do not adjust my values to seek conformity.

The second article I found is one that gave advice to female athletes called “Female Athletes and Peer Pressure” on the Positive Performance Training website. This article provides a five-step solution to deal with group dynamics in female sports. The article discussed the author’s issue of negative feelings from teammates based on her individual success as an athlete. With her teammates wanting the author to fail, the author started holding herself back from success. This background seems similar to the Asch experiment where individuals change their outlook to fit in with the group. Rather than reach for individual goals, the author changed her behavior and expectations to conform with her team. This informational social influence negatively impacted the author’s desire for individual success. Her five-step solution to resisting peer pressure has some familiar points. Step one is to be aware that wanting to be liked is not a weakness unless it ruins your life. Acknowledging what is important to you and asking the right questions is the second step. The author suggests a more future approach to determine where you want to be in 10 years or whose happiness is most important. The third step is to find support in friends and family that are more similar to you and your beliefs. The fourth step is owning your choice to let go of peer pressure. The final step is to build inner strength.

While the article provides a five-step program, I believe that the advice comes down to holding onto one’s values and avoiding negative situations. This is like the other articles, but the message is not as succinct. I believe that the author has suffered from informational influence and changed her ideas and behavior to fit in with her team. She suggests avoiding this path by holding onto to your beliefs and not adjusting your outlook. The basketball team issue is interesting as one of the options we learned to offset peer pressure was to form smaller groups to avoid a group think mentality. Since the basketball team is a relatively small group to begin with, the author may have to change teams to find people with similar interests. I feel that this article provides more advice on building inner strength than to combat peer pressure.

The final article I read is “How to Deal with Peer Pressure as an Adult” found on the MentalHealthCenter website. This article tied in very well to our lessons learned in class. First, the article discusses that peer pressure can be positive or negative depending on the circumstances. Some of the positive impacts of peer pressure can be to quit smoking because of non-smoking friends or to pursue an advanced degree if your friends are going back to school (paragraph 5). Some of the negative impacts are drinking to fit in socially or to work overtime to afford lifestyles that your friends or siblings have (paragraph 3). These negative examples are described as behaviors that contract your true values. While adults tend to develop their own identities as they disengage from the influence of their parents, some still succumb to negative peer pressure if they had been heavily influenced as an adolescent (paragraph 8). The article describes the impact of negative peer pressure to mental health, including the loss of self-esteem and control over your life (paragraph 9). The article concludes with seven bullet points to handle adult peer pressure (paragraph 10). While most of these suggestions are not unique to adult peer pressure, they seem likely to be successful.

The suggestions include being true to yourself and reflect on core values, being assertive, having a wide range of friends, learning from mistakes, being mindful, not minding critics, and seeking people to affirm your values. These points encourage people to not change their core values which is one area where informational social influence can greatly impact conformity. If someone changes their ideas and behaviors to fit in, they have given up a part of their identity. If that change is harmful, the negative impacts can affect self-esteem and physical health. Another suggestion of keeping a wide range of friends can overcome unanimity as the more diverse a population is, the greater likelihood that they will not always agree. This diverse group of friends can also influence group size and allow a person the freedom to dissent by changing to a smaller group. The article encourages people to be open minded and to learn from mistakes while at the same time understanding what feels right and holding to those values. The article suggests to not pay attention to critics if you are acting true to yourself. That advice can help overcome compliance and normative social influence by not seeking to change behavior based on others’ opinions. This article reinforces many of the issues we learned about group behavior and provides realistic suggestions on avoiding negative peer pressure even as an adult.

Overall, I believe that these articles provided some good techniques on dealing with peer pressure. Most strategies can be best implemented if the individual is mindful of the potential harmful effects of peer pressure and is willing to hold onto their ideas and beliefs.

Links:

http://inpathybulletin.com/resisting-peer-pressure-in-college/

https://www.positiveperformancetraining.com/blog/female-athletes-and-peer-pressure

http://mentalhealthcenter.org/how-to-deal-with-peer-pressure-as-an-adult/

Chapter 15 First Impression Post

--Original published at KatieMillerPSY105

For this first impression post, I chose rank the four different types of psychotherapy. My ranking would be psychodynamic, cognitive, humanistic, and behavioral.

Psychodynamic therapy tries to help people understand their current symptoms by looking at important relationships, childhood experiences, and the therapist relationship. I believe that this therapy is the best because this takes a look at the childhood experiences for their self-evaluation. Many things happen during childhood, so if something traumatic happened, this could cause for some problems later in life. I think the only problem with this therapy type is that the focus is on relationships and childhood rather than the present and the individual them self.

Cognitive therapy assumes that out thinking can describe our feelings. This therapy type takes a closer look into our feelings to try and help the patients. Also, these therapies try to help people change their minds by coming up with new and constructive ways of interpreting events. The book said “between an event and our response lies the mind” which I believe to be true. What we think and do reflects upon us. Think type of therapy is good to get a closer look inside the person’s mind, but the problem is it only looks at the thoughts of someone. I think if they looked at behaviors as well, basically pulling both of these therapies together, it could be more effective.

Humanistic therapy is an attempt to reduce the inner conflicts that interfere with the development and growth. Therapists will give new insights to their clients in order to help them. I think it is important to find the problem with the clients and give them a better insight. I do not see a whole lot of problems with this therapy, but the other types were a little better than this one.

Behavioral therapists doubt the healing power of self-awareness. They assume that problem behaviors are the problem and that learning principles can help eliminate these behaviors. This type can help to eliminate bad behaviors or habits from the client, but I think that using cognitive therapy along with behavioral therapy would be beneficial to the clients.

Chapter 14: First Impression Post

--Original published at KatieMillerPSY105

For this first impression post, I chose to do the first option of watching the simulation of a person with schizophrenia. When watching this video, I was thinking about how difficult this illness would be to live with. You can’t control the voices in your head, you can’t control the scents you smell, and you can’t control the hallucinations you have. This video showed the person experiencing hallucinations from the tv and from the pizza. The pizza was called “poison” by the voices in the person’s head. It would be hard to have to go through everyday hearing voices saying hurtful things to you. In a way, I thought this video was a little creepy or scary to me. I did not know a whole lot about how real schizophrenic people (not how the media portrays them) were, so when I watched the simulation I thought that it would be scary for those who were diagnosed with this illness.

I believe that the media portrays people with schizophrenia as “crazy” people. They show people with this illness as frantic and out of control whereas the person in this video was more calm and relaxed during the episode. I think that the media could do a better job of raising awareness about this disorder and how it can affect anyone who has it differently. Overall, I found this video very interesting and I now have a better understanding of what it is like for someone who has schizophrenia.

Media Production Project

--Original published at KatieMillerPSY105

Mental health services on college campuses have become more prevalent in recent years due to the implementation of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and increased media attention. Most colleges highlight their student wellness services in an effort to attract and support students. While institutes of higher education spend significant resources to aid the student population in mental health issues, little was known of the extent of mental disabilities in faculty and staff. Most information on faculty mental health came from self-disclosure in papers and at conferences. Four researchers, Margaret Price, Mark S. Salzer, Amber O’Shea, and Stephanie L. Kerschbaum, decided to study faculty members with mental health histories and the support they receive on campus.

Their article “Disclosure of Mental Disability by College and University Faculty: The Negotiation of Accommodations, Supports, and Barriers” addresses faculty mental health in the first large group survey across higher education institutions in the United States. This comprehensive survey provides more detail into previous conclusions or “hunches” based on small-scale studies and first-person accounts, including personal experiences by the researchers.

This innovative survey compiled the results of 267 college and university faculty members who self-identified as having mental illness, mental-health histories or mental disabilities. Participants were solicited through electronic communications in Listservs, direct emails to college human resources departments and outreach to professional organizations. The survey was designed to be anonymous to allow for greater participation without possible stigma attached to respondents.

The primary objectives of the survey were to determine the familiarity of faculty to mental health accommodations available under the law and the extent of accommodations and support they received. Almost 70% of respondents indicated that they had no or limited familiarity with the accommodations available at their institution. More interesting, only 13% of respondents actually requested accommodations, while the majority (87%) did not. Some reasons given for not requesting accommodations included not needing any special accommodations, not being aware of accommodations, negative impact to tenure/promotion, or personal privacy reasons. Respondents were concerned about the stigma of mental illness and the impact on credibility as faculty. These results mirror the personal experiences of the authors in their respective college settings.

Another interesting finding of the survey was that about half of the faculty disclosed their mental health history to a colleague even though they did not avail themselves of college services. Only 10% of participants had disclosed the information to a dean, provost or the Office of Disability Services. Some of the reasons provided for not disclosing information to college administration were personal privacy or negative impacts to promotion/tenure, contract renewal or even employment.

From a support perspective, the study found that the majority of respondents found much more mental health support from family, friends and outside professionals than with services provided on campus or with colleagues and supervisors.

This study provides more insight into faculty members seeking support for their mental health issues and indicating that most faculty do not use available college services. As fear and stigma are cited by many as a reason to not seek accommodations at their college, the authors believe more work is needed in both practical accommodations and in ideological change in recognizing psychiatric disabilities in the academic workplace. While further studies are needed to determine the extent of faculty mental health issues across college campuses, these results demonstrate that current college and university mechanisms for dealing with mental disabilities in faculty are inadequate.

Work Cited

Flaherty, Colleen. “Study of Faculty Members with Mental Health Issues Finds Mix of Attitudes on Disclosing and Seeking Assistance.” Esports Quickly Expanding in Colleges, Inside Higher Ed, 8 June 2017, www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/06/08/study-faculty-members-mental-health-issues-finds-mix-attitudes-disclosing-and.

Price, M., Salzer, M. S., Oshea, A., & Kerschbaum, S. L. (2017). Disclosure of Mental Disability by College and University Faculty: The Negotiation of Accommodations, Supports, and Barriers. Disability Studies Quarterly, 37(2). doi:10.18061/dsq.v37i2.5487

http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/5487/4653

Reflection:

One of the most challenging aspects of summarizing academic research is to determine what information to include for the readers. Since this academic study was based on survey questions rather than scientific experiment, the results are more easily presented to the public since definition of scientific terms and methodology are not needed. However, some of the survey results need to be left out of the article for sake of length and readability. I was also concerned to present the survey results in a manner that preserves the academic summary rather than persuade readers by selectively disclosing pieces of information.

I decided to remove some of the detailed demographic information for the respondents as the details of type of professor (assistant, associate, full or non-tenure-track) or type of institution (graduate school, four-year undergraduate, community colleges) may not be as important to the readers of the article. By highlighting the main objectives of the study, I feel that I can convey the findings without dedicating too much space to specific figures. As in the original pop culture article, I did not reproduce the tabular summary of results. However, I did want to incorporate some of the survey results into the summary by highlighting the lack of awareness of accommodations, reasons for not requesting accommodations and the resources faculty uses for support.

As the scientific study was based on survey responses rather than a scientific experiment with control groups, I attempted to address the five critical questions for reading research as best as possible. I wanted to disclose the variables used in the study including the definition of self-identified mental health issues and describing the method for selecting participants, the correlations from the study results and the opportunities for further studies. Since these results are based on survey responses rather than a scientific experiment with control groups, my media report does not make any casual claims or generalizations.

There are some similarities between my media production and Colleen Flaherty’s article, “Portrait of Faculty Mental Health.” Both narratives summarized the key elements of the scholarly article by addressing the stigma of disclosure of mental illness and low percentage of faculty utilizing accommodations. Both my summary and the article detailed the parameters of the study including selection of participants, the variable of mental health issues in faculty and the opportunities for further study. Neither of us made any casual claims or generalizations. Flaherty had the ability to receive direct feedback from the researchers to add additional content to her article. I had also reached out to the principal author of the study, but I was not able to receive any additional insight into the study or more recent follow up. This additional information would have aided in my summary as approximately 30% of Flaherty’s article contains direct quotes from the researchers. The news article also provided more statistical detail than my summary. I felt that the readers would still understand the overall findings of the survey with fewer numerical amounts and could reference the original study for the detailed information. My intention was to support the study findings that college faculty is generally unaware of accommodations on campus and tends not to disclose mental health issues to administration.

After reading the pop culture article and the scholarly research article, I have a much better appreciation for describing psychological research. I feel that Flaherty’s news article effectively covered the academic survey, including the parameters and results. I initially thought that I could easily summarize the academic research into a media report effectively addressing the five critical questions for reading research while making the summary enjoyable to read. It is much more difficult to summarize almost 18 pages of scholarly work into a two-page article. I first had to read through the academic report a few times to fully comprehend the major themes to be sure that I could articulate them appropriately. While I felt that the pop culture article was a nice summary, I wanted to be sure that I covered all the important issues without distorting the results by adding my own commentary or selected facts. I did not have the opportunity to interview the authors as the pop culture article did, but those insights would have been beneficial to my summary. For reporting on scientific articles, I feel that it is critically important for the author to fully comprehend the intent of the research and the appropriate findings, conclusions or generalizations. I appreciate the opportunity to create the media production, but I believe that I need much more background in technical writing and scientific theory to be an accomplished scientific journalist.

Chapter 12 First Impression

--Original published at KatieMillerPSY105

For this first impression post, I chose to take two of the Implicit Association Tests. I thought it was very interesting that these tests could see some of the biases that I am not fully aware of. It made me more curious to see the ways I may be interacting with other people.

The first test I took was the Age test. This test asked a few questions before getting into the test some being, “how old do you feel you are”, “how old do others think you are”, and asking at what ages do I think you hit certain milestones. After these questions, you had to put your fingers on the keys “E” and “I” to distinguish between the pictures of young and old people as well as “good” or “bad” words. At times, this part was challenging because I wanted to continue to click with the same key I did previously. This challenge, however, did not affect my results for this test. Before I took this quiz, I thought that I saw no difference in people’s age because I enjoyed being with my grandma and her friends as well as helping out people who are older with technology. When the results came in, I saw that they were the same as I thought before. I think this test in particular could help me with my future careers since I want to be a nurse, and depending on what field I pursue, I do not know what the age of the patient could be until they come into the hospital. I can not discriminate anyone for their age or give them different treatment because they are older or younger.

The second test I took was the Gender-Career test. This test started with the categorizing part using the keys “E” and “I”. The categories were family, career, male, and female. This test then asked how my home life was like and who was my main care giver, did they have a job, and who was your other caregiver and did they have a job. Before taking the test, I thought I was more neutral about who could have a career and who could tend to the family. I felt that I performed the same as I had with the other tests on the key clicking, so I was confused when the results told me I had a slight automatic association for male with career and female with family. I was more confused because I know when I want to start a family, I still want to keep my career. I thought that maybe the test was biased since it asked how my home life was when I was growing up. If the test went off of that, then they would have given me these results since my mom did stay home with my brother and I while my dad worked. I think this test is important for college students because it can show them that either gender could perform both roles well.

Overall, I think these tests could be a little skeptical, but both of them could help college students learn something about themselves. All of the tests on the website can help with careers so that you do not discriminate against a certain gender, race, age, or weight.

Chapter 12: First Impression Post

--Original published at KatieMillerPSY105

The first test I took was the Age test. This test asked a few questions before getting into the actual test. Some of these questions were “how old do you feel you are”, “how old do others think you are”, and asking at what ages do I think you hit certain milestones. After these questions, you had to put your fingers on the keys “E” and “I” to distinguish between the pictures of young and old people as well as “good” or “bad” words. At times, this part was challenging because I wanted to continue to click with the same key I did previously. This challenge, however, did not affect my results for this test. Before I took this quiz, I thought that I saw no difference in people’s age because I enjoyed being with my grandmother and her friends as well as helping teach technology use to people who are older. When the results came in, I saw that they were the same as I thought before. I think this test could help me with my future careers since I want to be a nurse, and depending on what field I pursue, I will not know what the age of the patient could be until they come into the hospital. I cannot discriminate anyone for their age or give them different treatment because they are older or younger.

The second test I took was the Gender-Career test. This test started with the categorizing part using the keys “E” and “I”. The categories were family, career, male, and female. This test then asked what my home life was like and who was my main care giver, did they have a job, and who was your other caregiver, and did they have a job. Before taking the test, I thought I was more neutral about who could have a career and who could tend to the family. I felt that I performed the same as I had with the other tests on the key clicking, so I was confused when the results told me I had a slight automatic association for male with career and female with family. I was more confused because I know when I want to start a family, I still want to keep my career. I thought that maybe the test was biased since it asked how my home life was when I was growing up. If the test used my personal background, then they would have given me these results since my mom did stay home with my brother and me while my dad worked. I think this test is important for college students because it can show them that either gender could perform both roles well.

Overall, I think these tests could be a little skeptical, but both could help college students learn something about themselves. All the tests on the website can help with careers so that you do not discriminate against a certain gender, race, age, or weight.

Chapter 13 First Impression

--Original published at KatieMillerPSY105

I was very excited to see that this chapter would be about personality. I love taking the personality quizzes to see what the results are. I know that some of them may not be the most accurate tests, but I do enjoy taking them!

After getting the results from the tests, I saw that I had the same letter combination from the humanmetrics test and the second personality test on the list. The results I received were ENFJ. The “E” stands for extrovert and was said to be 59% of me while the “N” was intuitive with 6% of my personality. The final two letters “F” and “J” stand for feeling (25%) and judging (22%) respectively. The first test told me I have a preference of extroversion over introversion, intuition over sensing, feeling over thinking, and judging over perceiving. Before this test, I would have thought I was more of a thinker than a feeler because I tend to over analyze every situation I am put in. It was interesting to see this result in both of the tests. The second test describes the ENFJ type as “pedagogue” and that they are outstanding leaders of groups and can be aggressive at helping others be the best they can be. I thought that was interesting because I do always like to be there for others and help them in whatever way they need, but I never would have though to use the word aggressive to describe my desire to help others. The third test told me I was an extrovert as well in factor one. In factor two, it gave me the result of emotional stability. Factor three told me I was agreeable, which their definition is someone who is friendly and optimistic. The fourth factor told me I was conscientious, which is someone who is careful and diligent. Finally, the fifth factor told me I had intellect/imagination meaning that I tended to be more traditional and conventional. The final test, which was the color test gave me answers that were closely related to the answers from the previous tests. Overall, I thought that all of these tests gave me very similar results even if they differed slightly from what I originally thought.

I believe that the first two tests were pretty accurate, and I feel like they could be credible because I had taken similar tests in my high school psychology class. The third test may be less credible than the first two, however, it did go through five different factors so it may still have some credibility/accuracy to it. The color test was the one that I thought may not have been that credible since it got so many results from just a quick click of colors that we were shown. All of these tests were very enjoyable to go through and were interesting to see the results that came up.

Spotlight Blog 2

--Original published at KatieMillerPSY105

We have covered, in lecture, the best ways to study in order to retain information to do well on tests, homework, other school work, etcetera. I wanted to take a look at what some articles are claiming to be the best studying methods and see how closely it matches with what we had learned. I found three different articles from sources that discussed methods for college students, middle school to high school students, and even parents.

The first article I did research on is called “How to Study: Studying Tips for College Students” by Column Five Media. This article describes some distractions students may face when they are taking notes. Even though a computer made it easier to take notes, this article found that there were many distractions such as “25% playing games, 43% surfed internet, 68% used instant messaging, and 81% checked emails” (paragraph 3). The article also showed some of the ways they thought college students should be studying. They say to set goals for your study time in order to avoid cramming (paragraph 4). We learned that distributed practice is better for memory so that you can have the information in your long-term memory instead of not being able to recall what you crammed in before the exam. Some other techniques they showed were reading notes, rewriting them, review highlighted information, using flashcards, and make up examples (paragraph 4). The highlighted information and flashcards would be considered organized materials, which we know from lecture, will be effortful encoding. Also, making up examples is similar to elaboration where we can make up our own examples to make it more relevant to us. Instead of just reading over class notes, one techinique would be to organize the written notes into questions by making headers. Overall, I thought that this article provided some realistic advice with some things that were similar to what we learned in our lecture.

The next article I found is one that gave advice for the high school age students called “Top 10 Study Skills for High School Students” on the Campus Explorer website. This article gave ten different pieces of advice for ways to study. These tips include manage time wisely, organize, and make study groups. We covered all of these methods in our lecture for studying and how they can improve our memory. Some other pieces of advice were to ask questions, study outside, sleep, and hone those writing skills. The tip to studying outside would be to actually try to study in an environment similar to where you will be taking the exam. This will help because you could give you retrieval clues if you are stuck. The other tips they gave could be useful, but were not as important as what some of the others were. This article can show the difference in advice for studying between college aged students and high school aged students.

The final article I found is “Ten ways to Help Your Child Succeed in Elementary School” found on the KidsHealth website. This article was similar to the high school article since both gave ten tips for studying; however, this article gave ten tips on how to help prepare your children for school. One tip that I found to be very helpful was teach organizational skills. This is a great tip because the parents could help their kids learn ways to encode information they need. This will help them in the long run if they can develop this organization skill early on. Some other tips included teach study skills, getting involved, and sending them to school ready to learn. It is important for parents to help their kids develop study skills while they are young because this could cause them to improve their long-term memory. I believe some “better” advice to give to parents for studying would be making sure they are spreading out their time for studying and coming up with ways for their kids to better understand the material they are learning. These two pieces of advice gives kids the best methods for effortful encoding. This article had some good and helpful tips for parents with their younger children, but there are some other things that parents could be doing to help their children learn the best ways to study.

All in all, these articles gave some good tips for all ages. Other than a few areas that suggested techniques that may not be as effective as the methods we learned in class, it was fairly close to some of the things we learned in our lectures.

Links:

https://www.campusexplorer.com/college-advice-tips/C6CA1844/Top-10-Study-Skills-for-High-School-Students/

https://www.rasmussen.edu/student-life/blogs/college-life/how-to-study/

https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/school-help-elementary.html

Chapter 9 First Impression Post

--Original published at KatieMillerPSY105

For this first impression post, I chose to discuss the first topic of reflecting on my own experiences with educators in the school system. I can not really complain about my schooling experience, but there are some things that I look back on and think that there should be some changes.

From the time I was in elementary school, we would take tests in order to see where we should be placed in our classes (highest to lowest math and language arts classes). Throughout school, I had been one to learn at a quicker pace than some of my peers in these subjects, so I do think that this system was well placed. This would give kids the opportunity to go at the pace they felt comfortable with learning. Every teacher in my elementary school that I had interacted with were genuinely excited to see what the future would hold for us. They really cared and wanted us to learn. They also enjoyed being able to teach students and start their education.

In middle school, we would take a test to see what math class we would be put into. Also, if you had higher grades in your science classes in seventh grade, you would be put into an advanced science class. My school was very into placements and trying to put kids where they needed to be in order to get the most out of their education. In those same years, I was able to be around teachers who enjoyed what they were doing and wanted what was best for the students. I had always seen that the teachers wanted to be there for the students and help them no matter what.

High school was the turning point where I noticed things that I thought should not have been done. We were able to choose which classes we wanted to be in whether it was college prep or honors. This is where it got to be a little troubling. Our guidance counselors did not want to put kids into higher classes because they felt that the student may not have been ready. This may sound like they were helping, but they were not placing kids in challenging enough classes. There are three of the four counselors who knock down kids’ ideas about where they want to go after high school and try to promote schools that were not as interesting to the student. It was a big concern that our own guidance counselors were in a way “putting down” the schools that we wanted to go to. It not only happened to me, but many others including many of my other friends who wanted to go to schools out of the state. The teachers, for the most part, were very concerned with the students education and wanted to make sure they were doing their part to prepare the students for their next steps into the future. There were some teachers who would pick favorites in the class and everyone else in the class knew the favorites, but that did not affect anything in the classroom. Overall, I do believe that all the teachers I had cared about my future as well as my peers futures.

One way that I could see improving the school system would be to try to help students who have different ways of learning. Some people are visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learners. I think that if educators, mainly at the middle school and high school level, could help students find the style that they learn best, could help to improve their performance in the classroom.

Chapter 11: First Impression Post

--Original published at KatieMillerPSY105

For this first impression, I choose to discuss my own stress management and how well my management style works. I have not experienced a college stress level yet, but I know that it is completely different from the high school stress level. I am typically a very stressed out person. I tend to stress out over small assignments or small things that I know I can do. I know what the assignment is and how it needs to be done, but I will still stress out about due dates and when I need to get it done. Not only do I stress out about school work, I also stress about things in life in general. I was very stressed out when I was picking what college to go to. There were many different factors that went into my decision, and I believe I made the right one for me. I was very stressed though thinking that I was not going where I should be etcetera.

Even though I stress out a lot, I do have some ways that I mange it. When I start to stress out things for school, I try to take some deep breaths to get my work done. I also think to myself that I have nothing to worry about because I know what I am doing. For situations in life, I have to think to myself that everything will work itself out in the end. If something is meant to be for me, eventually it will happen. A lot of my stress management tactics are just trying to think of something else to get my mind off of it and tell myself different sayings to get through it.

Overall, I feel like my own management skills work for me at times, but I think that there are ways I could improve it. Some other stress management activities I could do that could realistically help me would include, exercise, yoga, music, and getting organized. I already workout, so I know that it could be a useful activity for me to do. I know a lot of people who do yoga and love it and say how much more relaxed they feel after it. I have never taken a yoga class before, but I could imagine that it will help you to relax and I would like to try it sometime. I love listening to music especially when I am writing long papers, that does tend to make me feel more relaxed, so I think if I incorporate that more into my stressful situations it could help me feel less stressed. Finally, I definitely need to get organized. I believe that most of the time I become stressed because I have all of my things and notes scattered about trying to do schoolwork. If I get myself organized and put my notes into an organized pile rather then having all of them all over my desk, that would make me feel less stressed out.