Psychology 200 Course Reflection Paper
November 20, 2013

Prior to enrolling in a psychology class, I was terribly interested in the subject. I, myself, have struggled with anxiety and depression for years and been surrounded by others that have dealt with similar issues, so to study the root of various problems and be able to find a solution has always been intriguing to me. I also have three close friends that have gone on to study clinical psychology, so that with a mixture of years of therapy, I’ve always been interested in the field. After having nearly completed the course, I now know that the field includes a lot more than I could have ever envisioned from dealing with children with learning disabilities to studying basic cognitive functioning. If I had to describe the class and the field itself in one word it would be: expanding. One thing I find incredibly fascinating about any scientific field is that it is constantly changing and evolving, as humans do.
From a personal stand point, I like discussing the psychological issues such as anxiety and depression; how others perceive us and how we perceive the world. If I were to go into psychology as a major I would most likely follow this study path. However, being a nursing student, this most significant criteria in our course to me has been Module 3, discussing the brain. Alzheimer's and Multiple Sclerosis, two diseases covered in the module, are two of the more common diseases that I will encounter in the nursing field, therefore have this working knowledge of symptoms, and ways to deal with different diseases, I feel it will only help me as I research it further in the upcoming semesters. However, I think the most significant learning experience I’ve had during the course dealt with Cognitive Psychology, again based on personal experiences. It helped me understand the broader spectrum with dealing with social illnesses such as anxiety, pertaining to stereotypes, social interactions, etc.
What I enjoyed most from this course was the interaction of the class and instructor, hearing different stories, examples, and reactions everyone had in different situations. It helped put ideas into a realistic setting that truly helped me understand the subjects better. The thing I enjoyed the least about the course was probably the lectures, which I understand is hard to avoid in a course such as this. The verbatim reading of slides tended to get a bit tiresome, that’s why I enjoyed the real life examples, and it took the information off of the monitor and put it into everyday use. Going off of that question, I think what would help this course more is definitely more teacher-student interaction. Hearing stories from students and getting the instructors professional opinion on how to react and deal in certain situations, or even the instructor pointing out what caused certain actions or what would have helped different scenarios would not only improve the course but encourage a lot more student interaction.
Some of the things we learned in the course that I have applied in everyday life are the learning/memory modules and the biological/physiological modules. I have always been a very forgetful person and reading about some of the techniques to help train your mind to help expand your memorization helped me. Also studying the biological and physiological modules helped me understand where a certain friend I have is coming from. It has helped me deal with his neurosis a little better in giving a broader view of what could be causing his issues (lack of certain chemicals/neurotransmitters) and what I could do to help them.
Being a nursing major, this class has definitely helped me understand that illness is not only a physical restraint. I will have to be around patients constantly that have mental illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease. Talking about the anatomy of the brain has also helped, giving information about structure of the brain,