Second Semester, Junior Year *

hello there

I have been putting off posting about Christmas because I couldn't think of what exactly to say that could capture the whole thing, but now I don't have to because Erin's got it all detailed and explained for me. Sweet. So, if you're looking for an account of my Christmas holiday, click there.


I will just post quickly because I want to get to bed; for some reason I felt exhausted today, at the late hour of 6:30 pm.

Today was my first day of classes for Winter 2009. After much anxiety about choosing classes and such, I think I've got it all worked out. I'm taking:

Psych 304- Psychological Testing
Psych 342- Abnormal Psychology
Psych 348- Clinical Psychology
Eng 202- World Literature 1500-Present
Rel 212- New Testament
University Band- Flute
and
St. Dev. --- (my credit for being a peer mentor with FA)

which equals
15 credits.

Today I went to Psych 304. There was peppy music playing when we walked in and sat down and everyone was chatting. The professor (a very young guy- maybe... 28) was a recently-finished Doctoral student who has been teaching for a few years now. He turned off the music and then asked us to analyze the psychological effect it had on us, entering the class. People said it made them think the professor was nice, hip, and easy-going, or that the class was going to be fun, upbeat, and entertaining. I would agree- but it was weird the way just a song playing had such a huge effect on how we perceived the professor, class, and each other.

Then he introduced himself and then administered some psychological tests, involving various hand exercises (flipping one hand back and forth on top of the other, or using one hand as a "table" and the other to make a fist, karate chop, and slap motion in sequence as fast as we could). It was really interesting because it was actually not as easy as you think it would be, and then he explained that psychological testing is not all IQ and DSM-IV diagnostic testing, but that these simple things can be considered types of psychological testing and can tell us a lot. He said they use the hand flipping one with stroke patients, and the sequence with frontal cortex/lobe abrasion (brain injury) patients. I thought it was really interesting.

He went over his syllabus and played a few more games with us and we left.

Then I sat around for a couple hours and went to Eng 202. I had taken Eng 201 (first half of the Civ requirement) last semester from this professor and figured "Why mess with something that works?" So I signed up for the second half from the same professor. I think it should be fine, but it has given me a sense of stale-ness to the semester. I've already had this professor for four months- can I handle another four? Even though I think he's a good teacher? I don't know.

Today we talked about the Renaissance, which is where our literature time period begins for the class, and how the emphasis was on creativity, which was actually the destruction of things already existing. And how there's only one Catholic church but hundreds of Protestant churches because the very nature of Protestantism does not allow for any type of cohesive organization to it. That was somewhat interesting.

Then I sat around for another couple hours and talked to Katie (my roommate from years past) before we both went to classes at 4. I went off to Clinical Psych.

My professor for this class is a doctoral candidate and has taught a few times before. I'm not usually a fan of students as professors, but I think this is going to be fine. He was something of a stereotypical psych professor- very soft-spoken, interested in hearing about what we think and feel. But that's fine with me I suppose, because I am, after all, a psych major as well. I think he's pretty cool- he doesn't come off creepy or overly sensitive or anything. But today he had us go over our syllabus and then we had to introduce ourselves. After everyone did so, he recited all of our names and asked if anyone in the class thought they could do it too. Thinking I would be bold and shake things up in the class since no one was talking or volunteering, I decided I would. And I did. 32 names learned in about 10 minutes. Go me.

After that, he asked us all to take out a piece of paper and write down something we've never told anyone before- and if we couldn't think of anything we've never told anyone, then something that we were afraid of other people knowing about us, or something we keep concealed from others as much as we can.

I thought this was an interesting assignment and it reminded me a lot of PostSecret or Grouphug.us projects. After we turned them in, he turned off the lights in the classroom and read the "secrets" out loud by the light of the computer monitor at the front of the room.

After the reading was done, he turned the lights back on and asked us to talk about how we felt knowing our secret was being read, and how we felt hearing the secrets of others. When talking about our reactions, he brought us to the conclusion that often we have secrets that other people have in common with us- it's just that one or both of us are too afraid to share it. For instance, the class is more than 50% seniors and one of the secrets was "I am afraid to graduate because I don't know what to do without school" or something like that, and someone later commented that that particular secret could have belonged to half the class, and probably at least 25% of the class was thinking "me too!" when hearing that secret.

We also talked about how some people took the opportunity to really say something they wanted to get out, while some people chose things that were more "safe" to share, even though they were anonymously sharing it and no one knew it was them. For instance, there were some of your more "deepest darkest secret" type secrets, but there were also things like the one listed: "I'm afraid to graduate..." The two don't really seem to fit into the same level or genre of secret somehow, even though they share a commonality of being things people aren't willing to admit to others. Does that make one secret "better" or "worse" than another? And why did some people still inhibit their secret-sharing, knowing it was completely anonymous?

Our professor then moved on and made an analogy between that exercise and what it is like to be a clinician. He was talking about how people come to psychologists to tell their secrets- things they often haven't told anyone else, or very rarely told others. He was talking about how writing our own secrets should have given us a taste of what it feels like to that person, and hearing the secrets should have given us a taste of how it feels to hear others' secrets and should have helped us to become aware of how we react to them. And he also talked about how, if we felt at risk and vulnerable just in this controlled, anonymous experience, think of how it becomes a lot more risky in a clinical setting, when we're not sitting in the dark anonymously as a client or clinician, but we're face to face with others, sharing and hearing.

I thought this was a very interesting "object lesson". It has made me think about clinical psych in something of a different way, and it has made me think of the other people in my class and the secrets we heard and how interesting it is that they could belong to anyone. You can't judge each other based on their secrets because all you know is that each one belonged to one of the 32 kids in the class. But it has also made me think about myself and what other things I could have written on my paper today. Why did I choose to write what I wrote? Was it a shallow or deep secret? Maybe this blog has got you thinking about it too. What kinds of things haven't you told anyone? Given the chance, what would you have written down? Would you have told a "deep" secret or a more "shallow" one? Why? What things are you afraid of people knowing about you? Why are you afraid? Why haven't you told anyone?

So far, the semester looks good. If not easy, at least really interesting.

And those are my thoughts of my first day of Winter 2009.


-mollie

p.s.- sorry there are no pictures- I know posts are pretty boring without them.

(*I am technically a senior because of credits- that's weird!!! I could graduate in December if I wanted to...)