Final Blog

So everyone, this is my final blog and it over views what I thought about every blog that I did this
semester and all of my favorite activities that we did in psychology this semester. I really enjoyed 
everything we did this semester, when we started blogging for this class I was very hesitant and 
didn't really want to put my feelings online and wasn't really into it the first couple of times we blogged.
Gradually as the semester continued I began to enjoy talking about different topics and learning
through my writing and research for each blog. I hope someone out there benefited from my blogs
and that they realize that sometimes it's good to talk about hard things and express your feelings. 
Thanks for hanging with me through all of this and I hope everyone has a fantastic summer.

MODULE 1:

• Wk1: This blog was about myself and my family, how I have three sisters and a dog. 
  That I want to be a nurse and hopefully work in emergency room trauma. I liked doing this blog 
  and how I got to talk about my family because we’re really close and I love talking about them.
• Wk2: I talked about psychology and different sub fields. I chose to talk about health psychology 
  and the different things that a health psychologist has to do to help their patients in the most 
  effective way. A lot of times patients need a health psychologist when they find out about a 
  severe medical condition or have to go through extensive treatment they usually talk to the
  psychologist to help them get through the condition or treatment.

MODULE 2:

• Wk3: I talked about brain and behavior and talking about a little 6 year old girl whose name is 
  Cameron Mott and her procedure to remove half of her brain. She had seizures that were 
  severely affecting her brain function. I talked about how she had to start going to the hospital and
  seeing doctors from a very young age and how I relate to that because as a child I didn’t go
  through something that traumatic but I did have to be in the hospital a lot as a young kid with
  my jaw condition. This was my favorite blog because I thought it was so interesting that as such
  a young girl she not only survived the procedure but she thrived afterward and almost got all of
  her motor skills and functioning ability back. I watched a video about her and got to see how
  much he surgery affected her and her family and got to see how hard it was for her to recover.
• Wk4: This week I talked about sensation and perception, specifically about a women named
  Lore Thaler and her ability to use echolocation to get around objects because she’s blind. I
  related myself to the situation because in high school I took sign language as my foreign
  language and fell in love with it. I loved being able to communicate with the deaf community and
  would attend deaf coffee chats and get to practice signing in a real life situation. I helped to
  interpret at my church during the sermons for a little deaf boy that attended my church. I
  enjoyed this blog because I’m very passionate about the deaf community and the ability to
  effectively communicate with them.

MODULE 3:

• Wk5: This week I talked about nature v. nurture and the argument a lot of psychologists have
  about which side was more important. The example that I read about was monkeys and an 
  experiment that tested whether a monkey responded to a more nurturing mother or a mother
  that treats him more in a way that nature would. The monkey responded more wit the nurturing
  mother but learned more from the mother that was more in tune with nature. This supports the 
  fact that everyone needs a balance of both of them. This is the standpoint that I took in my blog
  that everyone needs a balance of both of them. I liked this blog but it definitely wasn’t one of my 
  favorites.
• Wk6: This blog was about personality and how everyone has different personalities and when
  taking a personality test you can find out what those strengths are and play to your strengths in
  life nad that can help someone be more successful. I took the big five personality test and found
  out that I had strengths in areas that I didn’t know I did. I got a higher score in orderliness than I
  thought I would because me as a person I am not good at keeping things clean and in order so 
  a lot of times you find out things about yourself you didn’t know.
• Experiential Task: I absolutely loved doing this task, I love to draw and enjoyed drawing everything
  about my life and loved getting explain it through drawing. I thought I did a really good job on this
  trifold and thought that it really showed my personal life both through the actual drawings and
  the the fact that I drew on the board also put a personal spin on the project in general.

MODULE 4:

• Wk7: This blog was about learning and the different ways that kids learn and the importance of
  the timing that kids learn. My example was kids and their development and the different stages 
  that a child goes through as they grow. I also used dogs and the experiment about learned
  behavior and how a dog can be trained to salivate when they hear a bell ring without even
  seeing food.
• Wk8: Memory was what I talked about this week, specifically about amnesia and the different
  kinds and the effects of amnesia on the body. I talked about how memory works and how you 
  have short term and long term memory.
• Experiential Task: I did an experiment where I trained myself to not get on social media by giving
  myself quarters when I would get on social media less. This was to help train myself and 
  experience learned behavior. I actually enjoyed doing this task because now I get on social 
  media less and spend more time in the now.

MODULE 5:

• Wk 10 and 11:Motivation, emotions, and social psychology these two weeks I only had to do an
  experiential task. I had to tell a story about someone and I chose to tell my own story. I told the
  story about my jaw and how I felt having to go to the hospital all the time and how many
  surgerys I had. I talked about how I felt and the bullying that I went through while I was in
  elementary and middle school. This blog was kind of hard for me to do because I have a hard
  time sharing personal things with other people so sharing this with our class was a big deal. I 
  thought this blog was one of my favorite blogs just because I got the courage to share my story 
  with a lot of people. This helped me break through a couple of personal barriers.

MODULE 6:

• Wk 12 and 13: counselors and their importance to society, in this blog I talked about a friend of 
  mine and her experience with a counselor while she was going through a really hard time. She
  explained why she needed the counselor, how they helped, and how she is after seeing that
  counselor. I loved doing this blof solely because I got to see how much better my friend is now 
  that she’s been out of counseling. SHe thrives in life now and looks back on that hard time as 
  something that she needed to help her get through her life with more tools to help her when life 
  gets tough.

MODULE 7:

• Wk 14 and 15: This weeks blog was about positive psychology and the effects it has on the 
  mind, body, and soul. I did the task that required writing down 3 good things every day to help
  me get a more positive outlook on life. I liked doing this task because it has helped me to look at
  life with a more positive lens and to see the positives in a situation instead of a negative lens. I
  found it hard to do at first but it got easier to do as the week went on. I would totally continue to
  do this throughout my life to help me be a more positive person.

My favorite student lead activity that we did as a class was the last one, the one that John lead about
mental disorders and the different ones there are and how a lot of times you can look at a person and 
not realize that they have anything wrong with them because you can’t see a mental disorder physically
a lot of times.

My favorite in class meeting we did was when we went out on the football team and talked about
privilege, at the time I didn’t really like it because I felt that everyone was kind of judging those of us
that were really far back on the scale. Thinking about it now it gives me a new outlook on life and
makes me thankful for the experiences that I’ve had in my life, though I was one of the ones that was
further from the front I don’t think of my childhood as unprivileged, my parents did a good job giving us
the best life they could especially since they started having kids at a young age.

The Ted Talks that were offered helped me to understand each topic more in depth so that I can go into
more detail on my blogs. I watched a good majority of them to help me with each one of my blogs.

I enjoyed reading Courtney Regner because her blog was so easy to read and understand and helped
me to find ways to easily explain each blog because I tend to get really technical and when I read her
blog she would break down a lot of the technical terms and explain them in ways that everyone could 
understand.  

Doing this blog this semester has helped me to come out of my shell a little bit especially when it
comes to personal things and feelings. This blog pushed me out of my comfort zone and talked about 
a lot of personal things during the semester and how I felt about all of the different topics.

I think this blog is going to help me in the long run because now I’m more comfortable talking about 
things. As a nurse I think that I can use a lot of the tools that I got during the semester especially about 
mental issues and being more aware when a patient comes in the hospital.