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bwaygal2687
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Name: Christina
Country: United States
State: Illinois
Metro: Peoria
Birthday: 2/6/1987
Gender: Female
Interests: I am especially interested in social psychology from an experimental basis, though I do have some interest in cognitive psychology as well from working in a cog lab. I also enjoy knowing more about the neural mechanisms of behavior, but the topics themselves are sometimes above my head. It doesn't stop me from trying though. I also really like molecular biology and genetics. I am consistently fascinated by the human genome and the amazing ways it can go right and go wrong.
Expertise: I'd like to think I had a certain amount of expertise in the area of serial killers and a minor amount of expertise in the area of celebrity worship due to my own research. Outside of that, I tend to be an expert in random things that people really don't need to know, especially random facts about television shows.
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
AIM:  bwaygal2687
Member Since:
9/19/2005
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| I guess I can do the end of term wrap-up now, even though I won't technically be done for about 2 more hours...
Developmental Psychopathology: The class wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I actually ended up enjoying it. I feel like I did really well on my final paper and I know that I did well on everything else. The presentation went extremely well and I enjoyed the textbook. All in all, a pretty good class.
Behavioral Neuroscience: Just as painful as I was anticipating. I didn't do that well on the first test and the final was even harder, so I imagine that I did about the same. I know that I feel about as good about the final as I did the mid-term, so it's making me wary of my grade. I did well on my presentation, so that is exciting as it's half my participation grade and is the only thing that will make my participation grade a 'B'. The first lab report about our human empathy lab was good and I did extremely well on it. Hopefully my write-up for the animal lab also went well. It's technically graded, but as the labs weren't due until today, it won't have a final grade until at least tomorrow, probably Wednesday. I enjoyed the class, but it was definitely challenging.
Cognitive Psychology: The class was ok. I'm taking the final in an hour, but I'm not all that concerned. It's a lower level class and I feel like I can do pretty well right now. I really liked the paper that I turned in and hopefully it was what Alex was looking for. All in all, an ok class, but not one I would ever like to take again.
Piano: Very exciting. I finally played Beethoven's 14th Sonata at my recital and I feel it went over very well. I was also doing well on my Chopin and Tchaikovsky, but we decided that Beethoven was the best choice for the recital since I had been working on it so long. Julia also gave me some music for over the summer so I have something to do. I have a Mozart sonata, Joaquin Turina's "The Clowns" and a Brahams waltz. I also still have Beethoven's 8th Sonata and I just ordered Mozart's "Rondo Alla Turca" along with two compilation books for intermediate piano players, so I should have enough to keep me busy!
Lab: I actually ran subjects this term and for the most part, everyone came! I did have some no shows and wasn't exactly their biggest fans, but I think I handled it well enough. Alex wants me to continue working for him, so that's a good sign!
I guess in other news, there really isn't any other news. I'm staying at Knox this summer. I have some fun plans for senior week and then it's pretty much some down time before I move to somewhere on this campus (though I have no idea where yet...). Colin's leaving for Michigan today, so it will be a while before I see him again. Hopefully I'll be able to go out there to visit sometime. It might be nice to see Michigan...and I guess Colin as well...
I guess in the future of my academic career, I'm going to be taking Human Sexuality and Microbiology in the fall as well as TAing Intro to Psych, music lessons, and continuing to work in Alex's lab. Hopefully it will be a little more low key than my last few terms, so I have that to look forward to! I guess I should go back to pretending to study for my final!
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| Mid-Term Update Time!!
Developmental Psychopathology: The class isn't as bad as I thought. The readings are vaguely interesting, but not really the kinds meant to spark debate. We're starting our group presentation/discussions on Monday and they will be interspersed for the rest of term. I'm worried about mine because I haven't really read anything other than the book and one slightly skimmed article. I haven't had a problem finding materials to order, but I can't find the time to read them. Also, our paper is due soon and I haven't read any of those sources either. The amount of reading I need to be doing is making my head spin.
Cognitive Psychology: I got a 95% on the mid-term and I'm feeling pretty good about the class in general. We're starting another unit on memory and language now and I've just been working on reading the book, which is actually pretty well written. We're also starting our short paper that's supposed to connect cognitive psychology to something in the "real world". I'm planning on writing about procedural memory and learning to play the piano.
Behavioral Neuroscience: The class went to a conference in Madison last week and it was pretty awesome. Lots of famous neuroscientists and some pretty interesting research. Madison was enjoyable and, if nothing else, allowed the class to bond. The class itself is terrifying. We have a mid-term on Tuesday that I've been studying for today and will be studying for until Monday night I assume. There are things I'm comfortable with and things I don't even remember why we studied, so that's a mixed review. Hopefully things will go well enough. Lab has been fun. Our rats are doing well and have been tested on a couple of maze paradigms. After another couple of weeks, they'll go through socialization stuff. Our human lab has been a disaster due to getting the wrong stuff and trying to reschedule. We've done empathy scores and cortisol collection and we're working on EMG stuff this weekend. On Wednesday we're going to be doing some neuroendocrine analysis of our coritsol levels from forever ago and then we'll be assigned our first lab write-up/analysis! Did I mention the word terrified recently?
Piano: My repertoire has been set to Beethoven's Sonata 14 (big surprise), Chopin's Prelude in E Minor, and Tchaikovsky's Italian Song. Julia and I have renamed the lessons Suicide 240 due to the large preference of depressing music. We have decided to end with Tchaikovsky every day to counterbalance the depressing nature of the rest of my music.
Alex's Lab: Stuff here is working pretty well. I've run one batch of subjects and I'm getting ready to run another. Then I just have to go through the motions of figuring out how the hell to get more subjects. But I guess that's a bridge I'll cross when I come to it and until then, I can always work on stim sets!
Other Stuff: I'm still waiting to hear back on summer funding. Which I really really want/need. Life in general is passable and sometimes enjoyable. Housing arrangements may or may not work themselves out. I have a friend who's trying to get out of an off-campus apartment and back on-campus who said she would live with me if she could find someone to take her place, so I'm trying to help her look around because I really don't want to live with strangers as a senior. It would only be a testament to how pathetic I truly am. Finally, pre-registration starts Monday and I'm looking forward to it a little. They're offering Human Sexuality, which I really want to take. I'll also be continuing piano and TAing for Intro Psych (which means they're giving me 10-20 students and power over how a lab section is run!). However, that is the end of good classes being offered by this school. I think I'm going to take Mechanics simply because it's being offered at a convenient time, it's in SMC, I like math, and Colin's been telling me for months I should take a physics course.
That's pretty much the life of Christina right now. The only thing I feel I should add is that Iron Man comes out on Friday and that even if we have to drive to Peoria, Colin and I are going to enjoy it in its glory!!
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| I have a slight amount of free time, and rather than starting new homework at 11:00 at night (especially given that I get up at 8), I figured now would be a good time for my impressions on the start of term. I have officially been to everything once (except piano) and feel confident that I have actual opinions at this point.
Developmental Psychopathology could be passable. We have a lot to read, but really, what else did I expect from a 300 level psychology course? In addition to the readings, we have to write 8-10 short reaction papers, which seem to be easy enough. She'll only take 8 for grades, but if you turn in 10, she'll take the best 8, so you can guess what I'm doing! I just finished a chapter of the book and it's not that terrible. For this class we need to do at least 15 hours work in the community dealing with adolescent problems. I'm working at the Mary Davis Home in the judicial services shadowing their psychologist for juvenile sex offenders. I had my first day today and while I can't say much, I can say that I am feeling good about this. Stewart is different than Tiller, but not in a bad way. He's just different. I sat in on two cases today, one of which I am already considering writing about for my final paper about the experience! However, for all the things which I think I can survive, there is one potentially fatal flaw. 30% of my grade is determined based on a group project. We are going to be assigned groups of 2-3 people and a childhood disorder that we have to become experts on. We need to find about 4-5 resources per person in the group that we can recommend to the class and then actually assign them an article. We are charged with becoming experts on the disorder and each group will facilitate one class discussion (for the entire time period) about their article. All of which sounds doable, except for the part where it states group. Sometimes group projects work out, sometimes they don't. But it all depends on the group and I am terrified that so much of my grade depends on 1 or 2 random people I don't actually know yet.
Cognitive Psychology will hopefully be my semi-easy course of the term. It's an early 200 level, which does actually mean something, but the material is somewhat dense all the same. However, it basically consists of reading about 4 chapters before each test, non-cumulative. There are three tests, evenly spaced throughout the term. There will also be quizzes given to assess attendance, so that should be easy enough as I don't skip classes when the professors care about that. Finally, there is a short paper that we know nothing about right now, but is only 4-5 pages, which I can handle no problem.
Behavioral Neuroscience might be the happy death of me. The readings are dense and it takes me forever to finish one as I spend a lot of time on google and in my intro textbook looking for laymen descriptions of terms used in them. I have only read one so far, but it was a 20 page article and it took me 3-4 hours to read it. We have about 1-2 articles to read per class, though they vary in length, and with all my additional sources, I feel I can make sense of them. But at the same time, it has been a very long time since I did anything neuro based, so I'm still kind of scared. In terms of lab, it should be interesting. We're doing two labs over the course of the term, one animal and one human. They're spaced out well and I shouldn't actually be in lab for 3 hours every Wednesday, though the nights I am there, I will probably be there until eternity! Finally, we're going to a Neuroscience conference in Madison in about a month, which should be very exciting. In two days, we get to hear 9 experts in the field present their research with time for questions/discussion. Even if I am completely intellectually outranked, it should be an amazing experience!
Work with Alex looks like it might actually be rewarding this term. He's having me finally run subjects for an experiment that he's putting together, so that should be exciting. Tim Rairdon (the other lab assistant) and I are getting together tomorrow to discuss specifics and make sure we are doing everything the same to decrease confounding variables. We should be up and running in a few weeks. In the meantime, I am still working on creating stimulus sets for an uncompleted experiment. I may not be able to do as much work on that this term due to homework, but maybe I'll get to make up for it during the summer. I'm going to try to at least put 1 or 2 afternoons in at the lab a week doing the stim set stuff and hopefully that will mean I actually get some stuff done!
I'm working on my research proposal for summer funding. I'm meeting with Frank tomorrow to go over it and then I am going to revise this weekend and turn it in. I have two possible sources, so I'm hoping that one will work out. If not, I guess I'll just have to try to get a job and stay here doing research on my own time and hope Frank is cool with that too. My plan for the summer is to do the lit review and plan the actual research, but to hold off on doing it until fall term. I don't know how far I'll get, but I do know that if I finish the methodology and actually have a way to test, that's where I'll stop.
I guess that's it for now. Piano won't start until next week, so I won't know until then if I have anything new in my repertoire. As long as we keep the Beethoven, I'm ok!
I can't guarantee I'll have the free time to update mid-term, but I will try. Who knows. With two midterms, I may have some free time after they're over!
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| The term has finally ended and I have finally been able to sit back and breathe. It's kind of a weird feeling still, but I guess I'll get used to having free time for a few days. However, I did promise a quick update as to the end of term once I actually finished it, so here goes!
Abnormal wasn't that bad a class. It was a lot of work, but it was well worth it. The final was horrible. He asked questions that we never would have been able to answer even if we had spent four weeks studying, so there was really no way to do well on it. Hopefully I pulled at least a 'B' to keep my grade in the class. Diagnostic assignments aren't back yet, but I feel that I did well on mine, so hopefully I'll pull a passable grade on it.
Psychotherapy was exactly what I've been saying it is. From the last entry, my feelings towards this class should have been well interpreted. But, it's over and everything is turned in and I can't really do anything more. I did really well on the assignments and probably could have pulled off an 'A' if I'd only talked more in class. Unfortunately, I probably pulled a 'C' for my participation grade, which drags the entire average down. But I'll live and the class is over forever.
My internship went really well. I enjoyed myself and I will actually miss it. It was intense and emotionally insane, but I really did enjoy the opportunity. I'm not exactly standing in line to be a clinical psychologist anytime soon, but at least now I know for sure!
Piano went pretty well. I didn't pass out at the duet-a-lama-rama, so that's a good thing. I still have too much stage fright to do really well in front of people at the recitals, but Julia seemed to enjoy it and everyone I know who saw it said I did good enough.
Well...I'm probably going to go play some video games now while I wait for Colin to wake up. He is apparently good at this whole sleeping the day away thing, while I can't sleep past 10 no matter when I went to bed. Oh well. Look back in a couple weeks for my spring term predictions!
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| In class today (the last psychotherapy class ever, yay!!), we had a final reflection to do. Being the kind of person that I am, I of course refused to do the assignment. For one thing, it obviously had to do with our identity as a clinician, one I realized I do not have. For another, I just really didn't like the class. But I didn't want to sit around for half an hour doing nothing and since I couldn't leave early, I wrote this which I now share with all of you. It kind of starts out by bitching, but eventually turns into something interesting...
This class has been the biggest waste of intellectual experience that I have ever encountered. Perhaps the problems stems from the fact that I have been close-minded about many of the techniques. I knew that I would be this way, and when I started term I decided that I would try to learn to appreciate the differing viewpoints. This does not seem to have worked. Perhaps it is because I am too analytical. I see the world in number and I like to see results. Many of the techniques we looked at have proven themselves to be effective, but the method of change is not well identified. I can't bring myself to fully believe that something like EMDR is actually effective. Yes, it reduces PTSD symptomatology, but I can't help thinking that there is some kind of placebo effect. As I said, maybe I'm too close-minded for new-age therapies. Mindfulness training doesn't seem like it would be that effective. And even if it were possible, how could it be tested? How could we measure something like mindfulness? How could we even begin to operationalize it?
Clinical term has made it very clear to me that this is not an area I would thrive in. Many of the techniques have no explanations behind their conceptualization. People assume it to be good because it works. But I want to know how. I want to know why. I can't accept the explanations that are given to me. I want evidence. I want tangible. The funniest part of the term for me was when my clinical internship told me I had great aptitude for research. I wanted to crack up. The person who was supposed to be training me to be a therapist told me to go into research. Maybe it is saying something about how horrible my clinical skills are. But maybe its saying something else entirely. Maybe its saying that I actually have aptitude for something and I just can't see it. Or maybe the problem isn't lack of knowledge, but rather is a lack of self-esteem.
I still don't know what I'm going to do with my life. I know one more thing to put on the list of things I know I don't want. But that doesn't help me feel better. There are a lot of possibilities in the world and I'm not sure which one is right. Also, I know I tend to be a people-pleaser, always putting other people's feelings above my own. I worry sometimes that I"ll be sucked into the wrong thing because of this. But if I'm not sucked into it, what will end up happening to me? Do I have the ability to make my own decisions or will I wander around aimlessly? How could I possibly even make this kind of decision?
What do I want out of life? Do I want career or family? I know myself well enough to know it will be one or the other. I tend towards OCD in that I easily allow one thing to completely dominate my life. If I choose work, I could have a relationship, but it would always be second to my career. I would put all my hopes and desires into creating the perfect career that suited every need. Alternatively, if I choose family, I could still have a job, but it would never define me. I would put all my efforts into creating the perfect family. This is who I am. If I don't put in the work, things are bound to let me down. If I put things on the periphery, they are less likely to hurt me. Only counting on one thing makes it easier to succeed. It can still let you down, but it's not as likely. And if anything else lets you down, it doesn't hurt quite so much.
So there's the thoughts for the day. A wrap up of term will follow sometime after Friday when I can actually wrap up everything in the term.
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