--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?”.

--Original published at NataliesCollegeBlog

To start, the reason I am taking psychology 105 is partly because of it being a required course for occupational therapy majors. In high school, psychology was always a course I wanted to learn more about so knowing that I needed to take this class was a pleasant surprise.

When I think of the word psychology one word comes to mind: emotions. Emotions are the driving point to people’s decisions. While decisions are based on how someone feels psychically and mentally.

Although I have little to no background in psychology, there have been shows on television I have watched about famous experiments, such as the Stanford Prison Experiment, which have made me curious about taking a psychology course.

After reviewing the syllabus the following topics of why do we forget, mechanics of sleep, and personality theory interested me the most. The topic why do we forget interested me because I always wondered why it was so easy to forget information that I needed for a test, yet it was so easy for me to remember all the lyrics to Miley Cyrus’ song, Party in the U.S.A. after not hearing it in years. Mechanics of sleep caught my attention because getting healthy amounts of sleep is challenging for me and maybe learning about better sleeping habits can help me understand what I am lacking. The third topic of interest was personality theories. Knowing how someone can be naturally shy or naturally outgoing based on how their mind works is something I would find intriguing to learn about.

Once I figured out which topics I found interesting I also noticed topics that I am not as interested in for the semester. In the beginning of the course, the topic about scientific methods does not interest me. Learning about the scientific method in other courses was boring for me and this is why I am not excited about this section. The topic of the brain/cerebral cortex is another topic I am not very interested in. I know that in order to understand someones mind you have to know what parts of the brain are used; however, it is not a topic that I will feel eager to study. Stereotypes & discrimination is another topic that I think I will not enjoy as much compare to other sections because it is not something completely new to learn about. A lot of my previous classes have used stereotypes and discrimination in lectures before so it will not be as new of concepts compared to the rest of the semester.

By the end of this course I want to be answer why I act/approach things differently than others and if social environments play a factor in that. I know how someone is raised changes their perspective and this would help myself better by understanding why I have certain actions and opinions. Another question I would like to answer is how social media is affecting current generations minds and how it will impact the future.

--Original published at ricez1998

Thanks for joining me!

I am Junior Religious studies major at Elizabethtown college. I Decided to take General Psychology to try and get a better understanding of how the mind works. After I graduate Elizabethtown I want to move on to a field in youth ministry. I want to be able to make an impact in a child’s life. I believe that getting a better understanding of the human mind will help me in my future. I don’t have much of a background on psychology I took a class in high school but that’s about it. When I hear the word psychology I automatically think of mental health because they are very closely associated.  The three major topics I am interested in learning are how to improve memory, how to get good sleep, and coping with stress. I picked these three topics because I believe learning about them will help improve my life. The three things I am not interested in learning about are Anxiety the brain and the history of psychology. The reason I picked anxiety is because I was recently diagnosed with it and am still learning how to control it. I picked the other two because they just don’t seem as interesting as the other subjects. The thing I want most out of this course is a general understanding so I can  try and be more compassionate to others. I want to be able to try and help people in their time of need.

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

--Original published at Jess Principe's Blog

By: Jess Principe

My name is Jess Principe and I am a First Year occupational therapy major at Elizabethtown College. I am also a member of Women’s Lacrosse team and Undergraduate Fellows Program as well. My hometown is Newark, Delaware and I went to a small high school named The Tatnall School. I loved every minute being at Tatnall, but I am very excited to finally be taking my first psychology class. Throughout high school, I picked other science courses that related to my future major, such as AP Biology, for example, but never had the opportunity to take a psychology course until now.

I chose this course not only because it was a requirement for my major, but also because I have an interest in the course, and am considering minoring in psychology. I have very little background in psychology, except for some knowledge of common mental illnesses discussed in previous science courses I have taken. The first thing that comes to mind when I hear the word “psychology” is mental illnesses discussed the most in society, such as depression and anxiety. In addition, I think of the brain and how it controls literally everything a person does internally and externally to correlate to a person’s actions in life.

The first topic I am most interested in is the “Cognitive Development”, because it could relate to material we have discussed or will be discussing in my occupational therapy courses, particularly in pediatric occupational therapy courses. The second topic is “Why do We Forget?” because I have never learned about memory before and have an interest in what parts of the brain that affects, and if it directly correlates to diseases such as Alzheimers and Dementia. Lastly, “Mood Disorder and Anxiety” I am very interested to learn more about this topic because I want to see what causes anxiety, how it can worsen or improve throughout a person’s life, and what is happening on a neurological level when someone has anxiety.

The topics I am least interested in is “The Scientific Method” because is was discussed a lot in Biology 111 and in my high school science courses. The second topic is “What is ‘Addiction’?” because I had to take a drug and alcohol week-long course in high school every year and have gathered a lot of information on that topic already as well. The last topic I am least excited for is “Power of Experiments” simply because I think the other topics we will cover are extremely interesting and that topic does not seem as unique or exciting as the others, but I have no doubts that I will still learn new information from the topic either way.

By the end of the course, I would like to know what is happening on a neurological level that causes people to develop stress, anxiety, and depression, because as much as these three health topics are comonly discussed in society, I believe there is a lot of information I do not know about them, and I am looking forward to learning more!

--Original published at Emily Easter TA's blog

Hi!! My name is Emily Easter. I am a senior Psychology major and Human Services Minor, and I am also the TA for Dr. MacFarlane’s PSY105 General Psychology class.

As a senior, I have taken many psychology courses, including Intro to Psych, Psychopathology, Emotion, Counseling Psychology, Social Psychology, Intelligence and Creativity, Statistics, and more. This semester I will also be conducting my own research, which involves Political Psychology. Last semester I had an internship in Lancaster City at a recreational community center for adults with mental illness.

The topics of this class that spark the most interest for me are sleep, emotion, and psychotherapy, which makes sense, as my ultimate goal is to become a psychotherapist.

I am looking forward to a great semester and working with all of you to broaden our knowledge of the field of psychology!