Salutations!
My name’s Stephanie Austin, a freshman, and a lover of people and all their complexities. It’s for this reason that I was genuinely excited to take Psych 101! I didn’t have time to take the subject during high school—blame the Colorado school system—so I’m very thankful for the opportunity. Even if it’s intimidating, I’m planning on having a great semester!
When I think of the word psychology, I think of mental illness. Clinical psychologists. Lounge sofas. Freud. All the basics. I also think of my grandfather, who studies psychology in his retirement with a particular interest in the junction between philosophical inquiry and neuroscience.
He finds a way to bring up the brain every time we talk.
A question I’d like answered: why do we have personalities? What makes us us?
As an extrapolation, I find the concepts of personality, intelligence, and social roles/conformity the most interesting. The first because I’m an explorer, and part of that exploration should naturally include myself. I’m looking forward to learning about why we are who we are on a personal level as well as taking quizzes and assessing their accuracy. Included in this curiosity is the theory of intelligence. What types of intelligence are there? How can and should we measure it? What kind of “intelligent” am I? Isn’t it all relative? Social roles and conformity appeals to me since I’m an eclectic person who tends to stray from her family’s preconceived “norm.” On a personal level as well as on a larger scale, I’ll be thrilled to hear this topic. It doesn’t get too much limelight in high school.
As for least interesting, my forte is most defiantly not anything regarding research. I like being in the field, but learning things like “research methods” and “experimental design” are just the nitty gritty parts of a science class you just sort of have to get through. Ah, and then the ubiquitous scientific method. Again, it feels like a bit of a rehash. Of course, I can’t know for certain if it’s not different in psychology.
A fun aside: my hobbies include doodling, music, wikipedia surfing, and rollerskating. I’m a very social person most days, and I love the sound of my own voice… So—please—call me out if I’m being irrelevant or annoying! My favorite domestic animals are cats, and my favorite color is—in general—a nice peacock blue-green. I have a dormant passion for acting; my party trick is doing the perfect little kid’s voice; I sign my name with a heart at the end; and I almost got put in a special school for figure skating way back when.
Anyways, thank you for reading! I know it’s long! Here’s to a great semester!
psywithsteph 
Hi Stephanie! After reading your post, I realize that I am also very interested in learning about what makes us who we are. I’ve always wondered if the sense of identity that each person has is a result of how they were brought up or how their brains were wired. I’m sure it could be a mixture of both also, so I’m looking forward to getting our questions answered, and understanding the human mind more thoroughly.
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I’d hazard to guess our personalities are a combination of “wiring” and upbringing, but what do I know? Makes sense though, given that some mental disorders such as bipolar or schizophrenia are widely viewed as hereditary.
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The Texas school system is exactly the same it seems to me. Psych was considered an elective, and I never had time to take it in high school. The class did a really interesting research project with serial killers, and many of my high school friends would talk about it. We elected to stop talking about at the lunch table though because it started getting kind of gross.
I also agree with you about how the topic of social roles and conformity doesn’t receive much attention in high school. I believe this is mainly because of the major growth/pressure high schoolers have to face nowadays, and they haven’t experienced many different cultures, people, and places, especially on their own. The opportunity to create themselves hasn’t reached its full potential. The topic is also hard to teach without sounding cheesy, and most students are already trying very hard to conform to certain cliques, so teaching it seems kind of a mute point I suppose.
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It’s sad that psych gets put on the back burner in high school since I see so much potential for it as being an applicable and useful class for growing minds. I would’ve benefited from it, anyways. My grandfather, for example, loves to tell his students (me included) about how we aren’t yet fully developed emotionally and how our views on life/studying/whatever change as we age.
As for social conformity, it’s a topic I can’t wait to discuss. I’ve taken an anthropology class, so it’ll be interesting to see if/where the two correlate.
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Hi Stephanie,
My name is Kayla and I am the TA for the Gen Psych course. First of all, I love the design of your blog, it looks really cool! I am glad to hear you are so enthusiastic about taking the class. You mention you are interested in quizzes and assessing their accuracy. If that still interests you at the end of the semester, Ian also teaches a course called Psychotherapy and Assessment and a portion of the class is dedicated to learning about IQ tests, personality tests, etc. Maybe that is a course you may be interested in taking in the future. Not many students are looking forward to learning about research and experiments. It is a very important part of the field of psychology though, so it is important that we learn about. If you get the chance, tell me more about this figure skating school; it sounds interesting.
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