Exam 3

This was my worst exam by far. I answered 33 of 50 correctly. I didnt have a study buddy, and my only review was to practice the test online. I never took notes, though i read all the chapters. I recall remembering some questions from the practice tests, and a few things from the reading, but the exam was super duper hard. I usually am not below the norm, but Exam 3 was rough. For the final, i'm going to have a study buddy. I feel like i may not have learned a lot i can translate to tests, but the fact that i've read every chapter has rounded my insight of some things i never would have known about, and now i can have conversations that i wouldnt have had otherwise. I know that grade is important, but if i pass and i still remember everything when i'm 30, you can't fault me for that. That's pure long-term memory right there, rehearsed and embedded thanks to rehearsal.

Chapter 13 - Social Psychology

Chapter 13 – Social Psychology

                Wow, the end of the year is finally here. This is the final blog post for psychology, so I’m going to go down strong. First, I want to talk about conformity because it’s really funny how we think we’ll act differently from the norm, when in most cases, it’s inevitable.

                We are social beings who look to others for answers on how to act appropriately. Mass hysteria breaks out like a domino effect, fear amounting from the susceptible frenzy of others.

                In the 1960’s show, “Candid Camera”, confederates (people in on an experiment) tested complete strangers’ will of independence. The scene was of an open elevator, with 3 confederates standing facing the door. A person, not aware of the experiment, walked into the elevator and faced the door as the other 3 had. All of a sudden, the 3 confederates decided to face to the right, the confused individual was caught by surprise. Eventually, he conformed to also facing the right, completely oblivious to what was going on around him. It’s a funny story, even funnier to watch in real time, but it shows our unconscious need to abide to the norm, how uncomfortable an unsuspecting individual when they’re off course.

                The Asch study measured people’s will to fight conformity. An outsider was put in a room, seated next to multiple other confederates. They were there for a “perception” test, only the game was as indicated:

                To answer correctly would be to say which line lines up with X, and the answer is obviously B. that’s what you might say if you were a victim of this experiment. However, the confederates’ jobs were to answer incorrectly to test the individual’s will. Most people eventually gave in and followed the norm. 75% of the experimentees conformed at least once of the 12 trials. It’s not a very hard test, but staying true to one’s beliefs is the true test.

                On the down side, groupthink is the emphasis on group unanimity at the expense of critical thinking.  Groupthink is really just joining the fray for the sake of belonging, doing something irrational because of the security of a group. In 2004, prison guard soldiers of Abu Ghraib followed orders and participated in the cruel, dehumanization of Iraqi POWs. I’m not going to go into details, but the stuff they had the POWs perform was pretty sadistic, like strip naked, humiliation, and mauled by police dogs. There’s not really justification for the lengths they went to, but I have to believe that some of these soldiers were people that one would never have guessed would torture another person to such extremity. This has got to be because of groupthink, everyone’s cruel actions done in response to other’s behaviors.

                Social Loafing is an interesting phenomenon where individuals become less productive as in groups. This one’s real easy to equate with in high school. In large groups where no one really has a strong opinion or will to lead, it’s assumed that the work load will naturally spread out among the group’s members, and thus, nothing gets accomplished. Imagine two teams playing tug-of-war, the more people that are playing, the less each individual has room on the rope and will not be able to pull with all their strength.



Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia has been nicknamed the “cancer” of mental illness because of its severity, varying cases, and mysterious origins. The name schizophrenia literally means “split mind” implying symptoms of split personalities or disturbances in thought, thinking, attention, language, emotion, and relationships. Unlike other mental illnesses, schizophrenia is not two personalities within a person but one personality that is, plainly put, abnormal. People with schizophrenia have difficulty having a job; in fact a large majority of the American homeless would be diagnosed with schizophrenia. It is believed that in the world population, .4-.7 percent have schizophrenia, so it is fairly common. Half of medical patients in mental institutions are schizophrenics. Most of these people were stricken with this illness in their mid to late twenties (typically later in women), but schizophrenia has been known to emerge in those as old as 45.

The symptoms themselves are categorized as either delusions, hallucinations, and cluttered speech. Delusions are withheld, enduring beliefs and perceptions of a world with no reality. These delusions are revealed by false persecutions of the patient. They convince themselves that something has happened, on a whim with no explanation, and hold true to that belief. This could be anything from believing that Russian spies are in hot pursuit as seen in the movie “A Beautiful Mind”, to something more fanatical such as the claim to the known cure for cancer.  Also taken from “A Beautiful Mind”, John Nash’s case of seeing living hallucinations is a very rare case. Most schizophrenics will hear voices, usually ridiculing or urging an action. If you experience inner speech, such as the way most people think, then you’re completely normal. But it is said that this interpretation of inner speech listening is where schizophrenics believe that their inner voice is actually an outside source. Disorganized speech is the final, most common symptom of schizophrenia. Responses to questions and explanations are indecipherable—the sentences don’t make sense, jokingly referred to as “word salad”.

Family involvement doesn’t necessarily cause schizophrenia but the actions of those members certainly expose the symptoms of the disorder. Caucasian American cultures are typically more critical and strive to make those within the household independent. However, in African and Mexican American homes, the environment is much more community based, where the family is the most important unit and needs are met by every individual, honesty and care is supported for those with schizophrenia by living styles.

In the brain, ventricles are the four fluid-filled cushions between brain hemispheres. In schizophrenics, one or more of these are enlarged and ill-proportioned. The decreased size of the temporal lobes, the increase space between the ridges in the brain, over activation of the amygdale and hippocampus are also other brain abnormalities that contribute to a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia can be dealt with indirectly blocking the actions of dopamine receptors within cell neurons, dopamine is the fuel for the schizophrenic mind.

Heritability of schizophrenia is still difficult to determined, but the correlation between monozygotic twins with one sibling already diagnosed as a schizophrenic as well as the probability that a child born from two schizophrenic parents will also have it hovers below 50%.

Chapter 16 – Psychological and Biological Treatments

Women are more likely than men to seek psychological help in the western world, mainly because of the stereotype is that men are enduring and too tough to for medical attention. Even race plays a roll, far less Hispanics and Asians are willing to get help for their illness compared to Caucasian Americans. Perhaps this is because of original family ethics.

Here is where I lose it and talk about what I think, what I’ve experienced as opposed to retyping my notes as a blog post.

A paraprofessional is a person who provides mental health services but has no professional training. My mom is a paraprofessional at one of the elementary schools here in town, and it’s pretty interesting. I’ve accompanied her to work a few times, for an ethnography assignment, and I watched as she as well as the other paraprofessionals as they guided and taught, rather than assisted for every need. My mom dealt with the non-verbal children, who typically suffered from down-syndrome. Most of these children were very slow to reacting and also very stubborn. A little kindergarten boy was in the two-word sentence phase and I sat in as he received help from his speech teacher. She wasn’t a paraprofessional, she had some training, but her role was to teach the children, at their own pace, how to speak. All  kids were at different stages, none were alike in their development. This young boy was still sounding out the consonants of one syllable words, a lot of the times his syllables would clash and mask each other so that his “s” and “th” sounded the exact same. He was eager, he was energetic, but he was excited to have a big, tall, male companion. That’s what I found a lot of times, boys are much more welcoming to other males. Every boy I observed was always interested in me, asking me questions, trying to get me involved, overall adorable! But the young female DCD (Developmental Cognitive Disabilities) students were less welcoming. I think the boys were more used to female paraprofessionals, and the girls were not used to seeing other men than their father or even the rare, male teacher. They always became very shy while I was in their presence, one of the girls would whisper her answer to the speech coach and then, our of the corner of her eye, her blue eyes would flash and dart away timidly.

I like this tangent, I’m going to keep going.

The DCD kids’ peers were very understanding of their classmates, almost too understanding. They would talk slower, trying to tread lightly in order to not alarm, frighten, or offend their DCD comrades. It was annoying to listen to them treat people differently. Every single action was praised and I understand that the mainstream kids were doing this out of hospitality, out of human kindness, but they did it so much, it felt like mockery. Maybe that’s a leap but as compared to the Paraprofessionals who were firm, loving and understanding as opposed to floaty and transparent. The DCD kids probably didn’t know the difference but paras’ exhibited “tough love”, they could show their frustration, exaggerate their sorrow and disappointment when a student became naughty and needed punishment. That’s something learned on the job, the training comes with years of experience. The kids learn and bond with someone who learns from them as well, treats them accordingly and figures out their needs and how to make them grow.

Chapter 15 Psychological Disorders

I don’t think I’ve ever been so depressed reading a textbook- Chapter 15 is all about mental illnesses and nope, I wasn’t very enthusiastic to read about them. I’m the sort of guy who, previous to this class, believed depression to be a state of mind, something that would come and go on a whim, something that could be controlled—manipulated by the individual. That was my precognition, but there’s a lot more illnesses than just depression, I realized.

Here’s a little history quick: The people of the Middle Ages saw mental illnesses as evidence of Satan corroding away at their society and the Malleus Malleficarum, a detailed manual to identify witches, was used to detect earth-born demons. Thousands died of conspiracy, but the Renaissance period was not much better. It was widely believed that an excess of blood was associated with mental illness, so “bloodletting” was the answer—by splitting a vein and letting the blood drip out to as much as 40% of the body’s contents (I’m officially disgusted). Eventually, humanity gathered its wits in the industrial era and the mental ill were cared for within hospitals.

Skipping ahead, something less depressing—did you know that the media likes to associate mental illness with violence? I know, right, the opposite is actually true. I can think of a few, that brother from The Village, or Joker from Batman. That’s kind of interesting- TANGENT. So I’m thinking the reason for this is because, let’s admit it, the whole mental illness thing is pretty clouded, everyone has a different diagnosis and their actions are different because of it, however overall, people who do not understand fear their unpredictable behavior which makes for perfect screen interpretation. Bam- Millions of dollars later, everyone’s a psycho.

Fears, Phobias, and PTSD!
Anxiety is the main drive for every single phobia.  There are lots, and it’s even said that 29% of the entire race will experience an anxiety disorder/phobia at one point in our lives. I’m not willing to doubt that because I cannot stand reading, watching anything medical. Just reading about the bloodletting made me queasy—Phobia defined as a fear of an object or situation that’s greatly out of proportion to its actual threat.  But a phobia is nothing compared to a diagnosed Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD).  Those with GAD are constantly living in worry and spend 60% of their day worrying (not sure how you’d measure that). 3% supposedly have GAD but what’s weird about this is that I cannot go to school and pick out who these 3% are. GAD occurs evidently in the late teens, early twenties so maybe my peers have a few years to go. Agoraphobia is the fear of being in a place or situation from which escape is difficult or embarrassing, or in which help is unavailable in the event of a panic attack. A lot of these people have symptoms similar to GAD and will avoid leaving their house for any reason at all.
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is especially unique because it is attained from emotionally disturbing experiences witnessed first-person. Anywhere from 12-20% of returning soldiers claim to suffer from PTSD.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a disorder of conditioned rehearsals of repeated actions that must be done unnecessarily. Some signs and symptoms of OCD are:

·         checking and locking doors and windows, appliances, and electronic controls

·         Creating patterns of objects or rearranging them- dishes, clothes, shoes, etc…

·         Washing and Cleaning things that don’t need to be cleaned more than once

·         Counting

·         Hoarding objects that contain little worldly value

CIS Field Trip

Let's just say that in spite of college being the goal of every high school student, I really am not looking forward to U of M sized lectures. Really, while we sat in on the psych lecture, I watched about 20 kids in front of me play with their laptops. I don't need that luxury in class, facebook is for later. Also, I get nothing out of the lectures anyways, I prefer to read and take mental notes, then post what I liked learning about in my chapter blog. That simple. At the university, i couldnt just go up and ask questions of the professor, because it'd be way too embarassing. In class, I can freely raise my hand, and it's the high school teacher's job to help me to the best of their ability- i like that. However, what i did like about the U of M was the fact that I felt quite a bit older while walkin' around campus. Though, I was kind of saddened to see everyone just walk by eachother, a little depressing. Anyways, the content! Psych in college would be more difficult because of all the distractions, the infrequent classes during the week, and the fact that it's an introductory course, it may not carry as much weight for every student based on college progress. For instance, a freshmen or CIS Senior may regard it highly while a senior who put it off till this year will slack and cross their fingers for a solid grade. Also, the lectureer was god-awful boring, I really hope schizophrenia isnt that important for me passing this class because i couldn't tell you much besides that most homeless people have it. Anyways, that was my experience as a baby college student, I really am looking forward to Morris or UMD or whichever i choose as opposed to the U TC. What i'm really trying to say here, i'd prefer smaller classes, kinda like HS.

Chapter 14 – Personality

Sigmund Freud, perhaps the most controversial man of his time, identified unique characteristics of our personality with a series of theories. Psychic determinism was the observation that every psychological event has an underlying cause. Freudians believe we are “at mercy with of powerful inner forces that lie outside of our awareness. Freud also believed that every event ever committed had symbolic meaning. Nothing was just by mere chance.  For example, if I bite my nails while I work on this blog, Freud would probably say I’m stressed—I may even be displacing my frustration. Then I might say, “yeah, I’m stressed, everyone endures different stressors daily” and he’d be all “No, Marco, I think you have some sexual desires that are going unresolved.” Then I’d say “Woah D-Freud, not so fast. This is a friendly blog here, man.” Anyways, there are a bunch of anxiety defense mechanisms that make situations like this bearable:

·         Repression - the suppression of a memory that is too traumatic, that the witness cannot even remember the experience. This mechanism falls in line with

·         Denial – Forgetting distressing experiences, something is too overbearing that one denies the event entirely.

·         Regression – Psychologically returning to a previous age, sucking one’s thumb under pressure. Can’t say I’ve done this recently.

·         Reaction-formation – Transforming an anxiety-producing experience into an opposite, a hypocrite notion. Our minds would disagree with our actions. Like in elementary school, the girls are always mean to the boys when they have crushes on them would be my example.

·         Projection – Unconscious Attributions of negative qualities onto others. People with paranoia have this, because they think everyone is against them but it is they who will jump the line.

·         Displacement – Taking out loose aggression on an accepted target. Screaming at and punching a pillow are much more appropriate targets for our aggression than on another person.

·         Rationalization – Providing reasonable explanations for behaviors or failures. This one sounds a lot like denial. For example, I’ll rationalize that I didn’t even care about getting an A in psychology when I get a C because I can’t bear that it ever meant that much to me.

·         Identification with the Aggressor – Adopting characteristics of an aggressor. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

·         Sublimation – Transforming a socially unacceptable impulse into an admired goal. Oftentimes, the bad things we do as kids can, in the end, turn out to be what drives our success, because of adolescent interest to start.

·        

Now are you ready for Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality? Here goes.

                Freud believed that there are 3 components of our human psyche, all serving a different purpose in aiding our decision making which forms the basis of our personality- by the choices we make consciously and unconsciously.

·         First we have the id which determines our primal wants and necessities. It’s is the underlying, unconscious power that strives for the self.

·         The ego, you could relate to the frontal lobes, decides everything in the “now” frame. The ego acknowledges the reality principle, the tendency to postpone gratification until an appropriate time, so I guess you could say the ego is our rational—the head, no pun intended, but the chief in decision making.

·         Our morals are guided by the superego. Without the superego, our id would do all our thinking without the factor of morals playing into our decision making. Anytime you feel guilt, you can thank your superego. I feel like the superego is the beauty of being human, because if we did everything on instinct, we’d be nothing but animals. Yikes!

Oftentimes, we’ve been humored by the illustration of our good and bad internals, the angel and demon resting on our shoulder. The angel, the symbol of morality, plays the superego while the demon, with selfish intentions, has to be the id. The confused victim with the decision to make is the ego, the big man who chooses what road to take. Another example is the iceberg: The ego is the peak of the iceberg, the part floating above water, but as we realize that the true mass of the iceberg is below the water, split by the superego and id, the parts that aren’t viewable from the surface. Kind of makes me think that everyone has so much they won’t readily say or act upon.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg with Freud’s theories. I hope my peers have filled in the gaps on their pages.

Chapter 11 Emotion and Motivation

I'm just going to look at Emotion today. Many psychologists believe that emotions exist for evolutionary purposes. We emote so that others know what's going on, expressions give our thoughts away. In the 60's, American Paul Eckman traveled to a secluded area of New Guinea to research emotions across cutlures. He showed the natives pictures of Americans displaying typical human emotions and also did the reverse for college students back in the states. 7 Priamary Emotions stood out: Happiness, Disgust, Fear, Sadness, Suprise, Contempt, and Anger. But sometimes these are too bland to precisely depict our true emotions. Alarm, which is a mixture of fear and suprise, would be considered a secondary emotion.
The rest of that section is terribly boring. Gonna skip some.

Personal space. Public Distance - 12 feet or more. Social distance - 4-12 feet. Personal Distance - 1.5 - 4 feet. Intimate distance 0-1.5 feet. I noticed this at Panera Bread the other day: The round tables are larger, accomodate more people, and imply a more casual setting and i'm definitely seeing a social distance here. The square tables are significanly smaller, personal distance seating. My friend and I sat at the round table, but as we were people watching, lots of older people occupied the smaller seats. Booths are more social, but i think i'd rather go on a date and sit in a booth because they're bigger and more secure, more private. I suppose after seeing said person for a while, I'd be a little more lenient to a 2-seat square table in the middle of the room.

The Mere Exposure effect states that habituation to a stimuli breeds comfort, as contrasting to my heuristic that we're more likely to get bored with something that's repeated. i suppose there's truth to both, depending on the stimuli. Say food, if i had a strawberry smoothie every day after tennis, i'd be sick of em and move onto strawberry milk shakes :) I actually think these things are entirely different. As i reread this section, i'm learning this Mere Exposure effect has a lot to do with what we run into in our everyday lives, the things we don't do intentionally but really how automatic our reactions to frequent stimuli are. This is really confusing to me- but essentially in transists into our own self-perception. When i look in the mirror, i go "damn, that's a good-looking kid." but then i'll see myself in a photograph and totally be embarassed of some flaw. But the flaw is not my ego, it is the fact that i'm not seeing myself as i'm accustomed to. I'm used to seeing my reflection, not an actual image of me so I'm more likely to prefer my reflection to a photo.

Now I'm going to debuff some myths about Happines.
#1 Happiness is determined by what happens to us.) Callin bogus on this one because it's not about WHAT happens to us, it's about the attitude we have towards things. There was a study of 200 college kids, and researchers looked at both ends of the spectrum only to find that both groups led very similar lives in terms of jobs, stresses, and social life. If you're a grumpy person, if you get told you look like a grandma and wonder why you can't get a significant other, it's not because you're life is awful, it's because of your terrible attitude.
#2 - Money buys happiness) To an extent, yeah. Money pays for things which subtracts from stress levels resounding from debt. but what IS said here is that money can't buy happiness, meaning you can't buy enough shoes, video games, or sports cars to be happier than a man who has less and a fantastic attitude. Money's not everything, but working hard and feeling pride in what you do to make that money is a different story. There's nothing wrong with that.
#3 Happiness declines with old age) Happiness actually peaks at about 50-60, only at 80 does it seem to decrease significantly. Younger people may have their youth, but they typically have more stressors to make a living than a 50 year old who's got his or her life on track.
#4 - People on the West Coast are Happier ) I'm a mid-wester, and i'm smellin so much bs from the spray tans, no way anyone can buy validity from this one.

But Marco, WHAT makes us happy? Because, you know, i'm just not sure. -- Oh, i'll tell you
Marriage, lots of deep frindships, college education, strong religion, physical exercise, gratituity (better believe it does), giving, and flow. Time flies when you're having fun? That's the definition of flow, and hopefully we all find it in our work place, this one is probably the most important as far as contributing to our overall happiness. I dont know about you, but i want to love what i do for a living.

There, hows that for the most random blog every. Gratituity and giving attribute to my overall happiness- so you're welcome, i'm thankful that i gave you all this knowledge

Chapter 10 – Human Development

Over the years, psychologists have identified 3 theoretical types of development. Some believe humans follow a stage-like learning process, implying spurts of knowledge gain in within snippets in time. Another is called domain general, meaning all the maturing happens at once while domain-specific entails that skills develop independently.  Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, took a keen interest to the development of children and believed that children were the former, and underwent a stage-like development. Piaget would have seen a child and believed that at that period in their life, this exact moment, they would be developing, perhaps, a social need by talking to an adult. During that given time period, which is undeterminable, that child would learn the most from social experiences. Later, say a few months, that same child might harness some motor skills by increased involvement in athletic activities with other children in a similar stage. If a child had a certain need, he would move on to the next stage of development in order to mature. Piaget exclaimed that children are not miniature adults, but that the two perspectives of either cohort vary greatly in fundamental reasoning due to their limited worldly experience. Equilibration is the maintenance of experiences, combining what is known with what is observed, basically the creation of schemas. For example, children are prone to believe that the world is flat without ever seeing a globe or otherwise. As soon as they do see a globe, they must combine all knowledge that they’ve accumulated into this fact making sense. The two ways that knowledge imprints are by assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is the assimilation of knowledge, the acceptance to new stimuli. Accommodation is a way of processing new intelligence so that it coincides with a previous schema.

Piaget’s stages of development are as follows. The sensorimotor stage, lasting from birth to 2 years, involves the development of comprehension of what is immediately available. Out of sight, out of mind. Also the training of basic senses and movement are developed in this stage. Next is the preoperational stage and it lasts from year 2 to 7. Though the individual may not be able to think beyond themselves and their own needs, but can think beyond the present. Those in the concrete operation stage can perform mental transformations but only with physical objects, from 7 to 11. And the fourth and final stage is that of formal operations, from year 11 to adulthood, consists of an expansion of the previous stage. This is the stage of thinking for oneself, a deeper level of processing, hypothesizing and experimenting to solve problems.

 (I personally believe that we can turn ourselves on and off to different intelligences, so yes, his stage like theory makes sense to me, however, it’s a more immediate, more continuous accumulation of knowledge. I feel that this observation describes the stages in school, such as phy Ed, then math, then choir, then science…etc. We activate different parts of the brain for different things, but perhaps knowledge is relative, at least what we learn in school. Social skills take over when we’re not sitting in a desk, and motor skills take over when we’re on a field or court. We aren’t necessarily not in stages, but more perceptible to gaining from those experiences that are vital to us at that moment. We’ll only stop learning when we shut our brains off, when we say “I don’t want to take anything from this”. Given Piaget is true, our stage-like development will never end, we will never stop learning, forgetting is what we fail to encode in the first place.)

Chapter 9 – Intelligence and IQ Testing

So, funny thing, this Chris Langan guy, who you might remember if you’re keeping up with my “Outlier” blog, is the smartest man in the world based on IQ. However, though he has great book smarts, he lacks social intelligence that may have actually put his brain to work outside of his Missouri farm, actually using the brain he was born with.

 French psychologists, Binet and Simon created a test for elementary student placement, hypothesizing that those who tested well, were labeled as higher mental processers. Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin, had a different idea. He thought that those who tested highly on a sensory capacity test, meaning those who could see, smell, and hear things that others could not set them apart cognitively. Simon and Binet were definitely on to something. Psychologist, Charles Spearman theorized that general intelligence, g, “accounted for the overall differences in intellect among people”(Lilienfeld, 320) .Spearman literally thought that intelligence was hit or miss, either you were smart, or not at all. Let’s look at it from a world perspective. Yes, in America, in western culture, sure we look fondly on our student for scoring an A on a whatever quiz. But does that A account for the entirety of their intelligence? Do we not possess other traits to our character that, could in fact, label us as intelligent in other aspects? Howard Gardner hit the mark when he identified the existence of multiple intelligences. This allows us to explain popular musicians, athletes, Chris Langan, politicians, and so on. Gardner’s frames of mind totaled to 8 individual intelligences: Linguistic, logico-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic. Though this seems thorough, let’s dig deeper. Clearly, this can’t be the complete list. What about humor, or memory? Robert Sternberg simplified Gardner’s concept into a triarchic model, 3 intelligences- analytical (book smarts), practical (street smarts), and creativity. Containing all 3 intelligences would surely result in success rather than all 8 of Gardner’s. Why? Because it’s simple, it’s vague. Langan would have had analytical checked off and a debatable creativity complex, but practicality?  Nah-uh.

Completing the IQ test, intelligence quotient, was required by incoming immigrants during the early 1900’s. This was the version of the test that consisted of many language-specific questions, and for poor immigrants would barely knew how to speak English, this proved very difficult to pass. The strong majority failed the test, and 40% were labeled as mentally retarded, an unjust title for non-English speakers. Finally, the test was reconfigured with many questions relating to pictures, as well as translated into hundreds of language, but not before the Eugenics movement kicked in. 33 US states voted to sterilize those who scored poorly on the IQ test in hopes of slowing the spread of hereditary stupidity. The majority of those sterilized was lower-class America, the Hispanics and Blacks. Even the name, Eugene, sprang from this movement. Parents in the 20’s and 30’s instilled high hopes of positive genes into their baby Eugene, in fact, my dad’s dad is proof of this, Eugene Riley. Cowinkydink? I think not.

Before I go, I should probably tell you how the IQ test works. Honestly, there’s not a whole lot to it. The test will measure something called Mental Age, and whatever that is; it’s divided by actual age and then multiplied by 100 to rid the decimal. What this means is that the IQ test is based on those with similar ages to the test taker. However, you’re probably already seeing something funky with this test. If we continue to get older, wouldn’t our IQ gradually slip? Well, yes, you’d be absolutely right if you said that. After age 16, the tests’ validity starts to whither, and yet we still use the test, mainly because it’s still popular. Thankfully, the IQ test is not required for college placement; we have other tests for that now. I’d prefer not to be gypped out of college for a lousy equation error.

Exam 2 Reflection

Going to be honest, I didn't do as thought as I was going to do- but that happens to almost everyone. Snagged a C+, definitely should have probably taken notes. I really don't think the lectures would have helped at all had I watched them. When  I was checking my answers on the test itself, I would underline the two answers I thought were best, and sure enough, I'd almost always pick the wrong one. I think I can prepare better for Exam 3 by reviewing other chapters weeks before the test. What seemed to work was my retaking of old, online quizzes, and I felt I could breeze through the ones I'd actually apprehended. Right now, I'll be happy with a B in this class, and all these silly blogs have to count for something, my grade will get there, and if not, big stinky whoop-there's other things than psychology in this world.

The Smartest Person I Know...hmmmm

The smartest person I know is influenced greatly by recent interaction, but I’d have to say it’s my dad. I consider him a renaissance man for a couple of reasons. He finally got his Bachelor’s Degree at 40, after working for a company for almost 15 years as a computer programmer and electrician. After he got laid off, he recovered as an engineer/architect. At home, the man fixes everything- he gets things done. My dad figures out problems on his own, he rarely stops to think and improvises well, which I admire. I wouldn’t necessarily give him the credit of book smart (analytical intelligence) but I would say he makes use of his creativity with his quick wit and improvising ideas to solve problems. I would also say he’s practically intelligent. This is all based off of the triarchic theory. I would say that his multiple intelligences might consist, in doses, of logico-mathematical, formerly bodily-kinesthetic, and spatial intelligence. With the g factor, he doesn’t popularize his expertise. Frequently, his family bugs him about fixing there computer, circuitry, machines, etc… Definitely more valued in the Chinese society from our text book J.

Chapter 8 - Language, Thinking, & Reasoning

This chapter does a pretty good job of rounding the bases, but what i thought was neat was how children learn language.

Confirmed by the book, babies begin to recognize their mother’s voice as early as 5 months after conception. Get ready for this because it’s adorable: Babbling, the nonsense vocalization that babies produce, aka mock conversation, is them fine-tuning their vocal tracts as well as ears to the sound of their voice. They’re mimicking the conversational tone that they hear from their parents. Comprehension of words comes much sooner than production. By 6 months they can probably recognize their own names around 10-12 months are able to produce commonly used words, a.e. mommy. They can speak about 100 of these simple words by 18 months and recognize hundreds. Come Kindergarten, they grasp language and weave thousands of vocabulary words into sentences. However, in between 6 years and 6 months, a lot of practice has been implemented. Children start speakin the one word stage, which is when children try to portray one entire thought with one word. Pretty self-explanatory. As they accumulate a wider range of vocabulary, they combine words and one word becomes two-word stage. Noun-verb most of the time.

Deaf children activate their conversational skills once they begin to use their hands more frequently. In a way, sign language is very similar to spoken language because it uses words, syntax, and extralinguistic cues like facial expression and posture.  Babies who sign also will babble with their hands. However, with different spoken languages that surround an infant, the child will pick up on the one that is spoken most regularly, usually by the mother, and everything else is a secondary language. We’ve all heard it, children learn 2nd languages better than adults, and it’s true because the critical period for language development is during these years, where the brain is still learning and growing, gained knowledge embeds much more willingly. The opposite also applies. With immigrant children who know one language and then move to America and use English in everyday life, lose their advanced speaking ability of their native tongue that they had arrived with despite their family’s usage.

Given this, I guess you could say language is more nurture than nature…but then…where did it all begin ? The chicken or the egg? Deep…this is deep stuff.

Dreaming about Chapter 5

Reading Chapter 5, I felt left out. All these odd sleeping conditions I've never been a victim of makes me pity my youthfulness. On my To Do List, I have yet to: Be abducted by aliens, awake without the ability to move, fall asleep randomly, and enjoy a night-terror. On this blog, I'm going to talk about everything but drugs and hypnosis because that was booooring.

Having the sleep cycle explained helped my understanding of dreams and sufficient sleep. It makes sense to me how during the first 2 cycles we are in deep sleep, aka stages 3 & 4. But as we lighten up towards the end, the sleep cycle tapers off from stage 2, we're ready to function by 6 hours of sleep which explains why despite my lack of sleep, i still wake up and feel completely rejuvenated. So what if i die sooner, at least i'll have lived. I feel the later i sleep, the more fatigued i feel and the sooner i fall asleep the next evening. I like that better, I'm going to keep staying up late =D. Now Lucid dreaming is something that I frequently do. It's always that stage when dreams become visual, I'll hit the bridge (which i just learned is called Lucid Dreaming) and just lie there and try to let the dream finish on a good note. Like, I'll know i'm dreaming but i just want to know how it ends, gahh frusturating.

When I was younger, I was part of the percentile the sleep-walked frequently. I would take trips to the bathroom, except never reach the bathroom at all. In the morning, I'd be informed of the mess I'd created and just laugh innocently about it because it was while i was sleeping.

As much as I want to believe Freud about symbolism in dreams, I must face the truth and realize they don't mean anything beyond what my imagination can conjure. I think that's the beauty of dreams, to think they mean more than they actually do. Like a horoscope, but metaphysical, not pseudoscience. Most of my dreams that I remember are about my ex, so I'm guessing that dreams are about desires of the subconcious- or the stream of consciousness as our book describes. Just like in dreams, we only remember things that stand out to us, because it's important. Neurocognitive theory suggests we can only dream about what we know. Our biased minds are limited to our emotions. I feel like I was better off not knowing this =( Chapter 5, thanks for proving everything I thought I knew about dreams wrong

Memorizing Chapter 7

The Paradox of memory: Why we can memorize complex ideas but sometimes forget where we parked. Our memory tends to memorize selectively, basically on the importance level that we associate each possible instance. There are 3 systems of memory that each event must go through in order to be recognized. At first we have Sensory Memory, which is the brief storage of perceptual information that lasts for no more than 3 seconds. Sensory, like senses, we’ll hear, see, smell, taste—Sense something that will peak our interest and continue into short-term memory. Short term memory is the most important, most used; in fact you’re using it right now while you process what I’m telling you about memory, nuts huh? Short-term memory is the thing you’re thinking about at the moment; essentially we’re always in this mode. But Marco! What about long-term memory? Oh yes, we’re getting there. Short-term is pretty neat because we can draw long-term memories back or at least imprint them into our LTM through rehearsal. It’s when we quiz ourselves, and think about things multiple times that help us remember something important is coming up. The opposite of rehearsal is called decay, and it’s when we forget things but I doubt you’ll forget about the concept of decay, pretty self-explanatory. We memorize things best by chunking information, like numbers and dates. Por ejemplo, 1,639 (One thousand, six hundred, and thirty nine) is easier to remember than with separate digits—one-six-three-nine. Am I right? Well if you’re too good for 4 digits, then try ampin up the number there, sport. The average span of short term memory is 7 plus or minus two meaning we can jugle 7 plus or minus 2 pieces of information within our STM. Basically, just walk away knowing chunking information works best, and you’ll be just fine. And if the connection with the event is strong enough, it will stay in our long-term memory as long as continue to rehearse it frequently. There are different ways we access our LTM too, get excited.

Explicit memories are the memories that we are consciously aware of, the ones that we dig for when we’re thinking, so think VOLUNTARY. Semantic, think meaning and relevance, like factual events-knowledge, book smarts, whatever you wanna call it, this describes semantic memory. The other type of explicit memory is called episodic memory, referring to autobiographic events, things we see 1^st person in our heads, also voluntary. Explicit, things we gotta think about? If you can capture that in your short-term memory, rehearse it and store it as semantic memory, I think we can move on. Well done, blogger.
The other type of LTM is called implicit memory, which is made up of four sub sections of memory, the things we can recall automatically, or INVOLUNTARY. When your mom tells you to practice your tennis serve and develop muscle memory so you don’t have another losing record this year, she’s alluding to procedural memory which is motor memory, also relevant in speech, even in vocal music. 2 other implicit memory subtypes sound a lot like Procedural memory, they are Conditioning and Habituation but I’m not really sure how to describe them seeming as their Marco definitions would probably sound a lot like the one for procedural. Ok then…well the final type is called priming which is our preparation or response time to a stimulus that we’ve previously encountered. Our actions are guided by primes them, kinda neat. The example in the book goes like this: Fill in the blank—Queen, K_____ and most of us will probably think “King”, yeah? Well we’ve been primed to do so based on the word Queen. I wish I had a personal example, but my episodic memory is failing me.

Well that’s the first couple sections of C7 and probably the most exciting, fare thee well, bloggers!

Learning about Learning - Chapter 6

One thing that I never put into perspective is where we draw all our knowledge from. Observing, trial-and-error, etc. What's cool is all those things we thought we knew about learning all have neat, little labels. So lets get crackin, Chapter 6, Geronimo!

Now everyone has seen this episode of The Office
http://www.spike.com/video-clips/0jnov0/the-office-the-jim-trains-dwight
and now that you have, you'll probably remember Jim saying something about a certain scientist who taught dogs to salvate. AHA! That scientist was reknowned, Russian physicist, Ivan Pavlov. He noticed that dogs responded to food by slobbering profusely over the sight of food. He soon noticed that the dogs also reacted similarily to his footsteps before dinner. He saw that the dog slobbering at the sight of food was an unconditioned response (meaning an involuntary action, something the dog innately did) and that the food was the unconditioned stimulus, because the natural response to delectable morsles is to slobber over them. Pavlov recognized that his footsteps set off an alarm for the dog so he designed an experiment to test his theory of this "alarm". Pavlov had his pooch strapped into a harness, and set a dish of dog food behind a blind. He then would set off a metronome before feeding the dog, and eventually, just like in the video, the dog began to salvate at the sound of the metronome. It knew food was on the way. The metronome represented a conditioned stimulus, meaning it was learned, aquired, to drool in response to the ticking noise.
Likewise, Dwight Shrute was conditioned to the computer sound, but he expected a treat to be presented and it wasn't offered. What a fool! Actually, that type of experimentation, withholding the altoid or doggy dish is called extinction, because it is the removal of the conditioned stimulus causing the response. The Dwight would soon learn that the computer noise would not always follow an altoid. However, should the altoid ever be rewarded again after the noise, a spontaneous recovery would be established and Dwight would pick up his old habit again. This is called Classical Conditioning, should Dwight or the dog hear a similar noise, but not the exact same one, they may respond in one of two ways.
Stimulus gerneralization is when the stimuli is close but no cigar, regardless the same response will be made as if it was made by the original stimuli. Stimulus discrimination would be the ignorance of a similar stimuli, or a less pronounced response as it says in the book. If there's one important thing outta Chapter 6, this is it! 

Chapter 4 - Sensation & Perception

Here we are, still learning about body parts. Gah it's gross. The reason i didn't take a science/anatomy class this year is so i could try to avoid this topic, but here we are. Learned about the brain in C3, but it gets more gruesome now that we've reached the eyeballs. Thankfully, C4 doesn't open with diagrams of body parts just yet.

We have our 2 founders of C4: Sensation & Perception. Sensation is our senses taking in the stimulus and perception is our brain decipering the stimulus. An illusion is our incorrect perception of the stimulus. Put into psych terms, transduction is merely what we're seeing and the action that happens because of the stimulus inside our head among the neurons' activities. The Just Ntoicable Difference is the lowest point in which we can acknowledge a stimulus. Ok you get it, lots of vocab initally. Sorry, we'll move on to the cool stuff.

Synesthesia is pretty neat. You've probably heard of variations of this. It's when a person has a cross modal experience--a.e. hearing colors in music, tasting colors, whatever, it's crazy but totally real!

A lot of this chapter tests our own vision and brainpower. Like lengths of lines in comparison to seemingly longer ones, optical illusions essentially. A good way to prove to the readers that our own perception isnt always right.

Aha, persuasion! Subliminal persuasion/perception. Messages that are so subtle that we ourselves don't necessarily pick up on, however our brains subconciously process the information. One of the examples in the book is a total scandal, a gin bottle advertisement spells the words "SEX" in ice cubes. Clever, i must admit. Other examples exist during commercials with quick, lightning-fast images that influence our moods and desires.

Ok, gonna pick this up here. Eyes: Because we rely on it so much, it's the most common way we are fooled by our own perception. We have rods and cones. Rods allow us to see shapes and differentiate different objects from others. Cones add color to our vision. Humans have 3, most mammals have 2, and some freakishly perceptive people have 4 cones. The difference? Mammals, like cats and dogs, are colorblind to red, humans can see the ROYGBIV spectrum, and some can even see more intense shades and hues of red. This kind of bedazzled me. Insects being able to see ultra-violet, aka sun rays, but i'm not sure how many rods or cones they have. Light is divided into three colors. Red, blue, and not yellow but green lights all make up what we see. Colors work by, and i'm sure you've already heard this from your mothers, every color making it up and creating that specific hue. The absence of the color itself creates that color. funky, huh? The Gestalt Principles seemed important so i'm going to tackle these. They're like the rules of objecs in space. 1.) Proximity acknowledges that objects bunched together "appear" as one, unfied whole. 2.) Similarity has to do with order of objects. Does one side compliment another, is there a pattern that we can decipher, is this pattern important? 3.) Continuity of objects seems like proximity but isn't. We close objects, make shapes connect in our heads, almost like forcing proximity. For instance the shape in the book shows  + sign. Yet we percieve an | and __ overlapping eachother, yeah? well, why couldn't it be four halves connected as one single +? We see things as one. That's what Gestalt means in German, "whole". 4.) Closure implies that when we see objects that appear to have a corner block, our memory serves us by "filling in the blank" so that we can make sense of the partially blocked image. 5.) Symmetry appears similar to similarity but describes 2 halves creating a single unit rather than a grouping of multiple shapes mirroring one another. 6.) Figure-ground has to do with those silly optical illusions. Why they fools us? Because we initally look at the image that's in plain sight, we percieve it, but then after a while our perceptions expand to the backround and we see that the shape itself is being composed of another image. Like the old woman in a hood or a young woman in a hat picture. Google it if you have no idea what i'm talking about. Gestalt princples overlay the rules our vision abides to and the way we percieve objects.

Ok, that seems pretty solid. I'm going to let my peers tell you about the rest of the senses. Thanks for reading!

Chapter 3, sooo glad this wasn't THAT boring

Gotta admit, i was a little nervous about reading 40 some pages about brain activity. However, the multiple parts of the brain was pretty cool. I think it was the buzz-killing first couple of pages that tried to describe the activity of neurons and synapses that turned me off. Thank goodness for Prof. Gewirtz who explained that section thoroughly because i would not have learned a thing from the text. Anyways, let's get down to the nitty-gritty.
What stood out to my, and what i enjoyed reading the most from this chapter, was how our nervous system was categorized. There is so much here! The Central Nervous System was viewed by me as sort of the structure, the facts we had to know, the 2-D knowledge parts that have only one definition. The hippocampus does this, the frontal lobes govern that, and so forth. However the Peripheral Nervous System has depth! It describes actions. For example, the Somatic is voluntary movement, things we can't control that are reflexes to stimuli. Of course this is all explained by the CNS but what's super cool is how the two work together. The Four F's of Auntonomic PNS make us sound so inhuman, like machines wired to commit to a routine via the sympathetic and parasymptathetic systems. This is something that i'm almost positive will come back in later chapters.
Now, i don't want to leave synapses completely out of this blog because how drugs affect our nervous system really intrigued me. Of course it's common knowledge that drugs are either stimulants or depressants, but i didn't know exactly how or what they affected. Its the synapses, uhderr! They either heighten or inhibit neurotransmitter release, block receptors in the axon or channel, and so on and so forth.
I never thought the brain was so divided as it is. It's sort of odd to think about us thinking about our brain... Anyways,  If the lobes are just one homogeneous material of ooshy, gooshy pink stuff, than why is it divided? I'll just have to live with it. What i don't fully understand is why we get dizzy. It must have nothing to do with our brain, because when we spin around, our head, or at least the rear of the brain, stays pretty centered. The occipital lobes and cerebellum would hardly move, but is it in the eyes that translate the blurry image...but then we'll close our eyes and still feel dizzy while we spin. i'm so confused.
All that jazz about MRI's and PET and whatever else there was, totally lost me. And that's where i pretty much zoned out for the rest of the time, good riddance chapter 3. Nah, just kidding. That sub sect. on heratability was interesting. It almost seems like "luck of the draw", biology. It's being made more and more apparent that Psych is very much a science rather than a socio-study (if that's a word).
Hopefully this first exam won't totally ruin my grade, i feel enlightenened after reflecting on all this passed-learned content besides my failure to correctly capitalize all my I's. This chapter has definitely been eye-opening for me. Till next week, adieu!

Chapter 2 blog, here we go

Heuristics, heuristics, heuristics! That's the word to know from Chapter 2. This word speaks even greater to the teens who they they know it all-- yeah, I'm guilty. I like to think I know what's best, in any given scenario. I absolutely would have said Reno, NV was northwest of San Diego, however though my geography skills would have failed, I'm pretty sure I would have caught myself at the murder rate for Michigan and Detroit...even though, that would prove the Hindsight Bias theorem, so I guess there's no way to really tell but it sure is easy for me to say that I would have known the answer to that question after the fact. Oh, Lillenfeld, you're sucha smarty pants.

I want to know the difference between external and internal validity within Naturalistic Obersation, because I have always believed that observation within a society proves most valuable, or in other words,the emic approach. Jane Goodall has to know the internal validity of chimps, even though i have no idea what that could possibly be, she's got to know it, she's observed them for how long? decades?

What's great about the rest of this chapter is that I learned EVERYTHING from my Stats class. Research and survey gliches, distorted polls and such--their evil intentions. I really wish there was something cooler you could say to describe the "Halo Effect" because it is so true and should be defined better than to say something cheezy like Halo Effect, come on! Correlations and all that gib jab was neat, but the addition of the Correlation vs Causation caught my eye because not all things are related. That ice cream/crime rate was a great example of a C factor.

The reason I don't take medicine is because I think every pill i would take will be a placebo and that, "Yes, it's all in my head. Why bother with meds?" Also the Nocebo, which i've never heard of but was easy to comprehend, reminds me of being scared during a scary movie, or even how I jump at every little thing that occurs.
The whole section on morals and ethic guidelines grossed me out. I skipped over the "Tuskegee/Spinal Tap" because i just cant look at that picture. But i think we live in a better world because of all the things that we can't do. But what i don't understand is the difference between researchers' deceitfulness and demand characteristics. If its not ok to be deceitfulful but ok to mask experiments, than who is right and who is wrong? I completely understand if the experiment is harmless but something surgical will definitely raise some eyebrows. All I have to say is thank goodness for cute little animals instead.

Mean, median, mode. Yeah i know what it is, i'm a college student, whaddup. Also, the mean can be skewed by outliers which can affect results and assumptions taken which is why the mode and median sometimes offer better data. See, i know what i'm talking about, no sense in reading things I already know right, Lillenfeld? Thanks for dishin out the difficult research procedure questions at the end. I thought i was doing pretty well till the end.

Golly, short chapter. Gonna hop onto C3 manana. Exam One, here we come!

Chapter One went a lil somethin' like this:

I gotta say, the first 10 True/False questions got me; Lillenfeld made us check our egos at the door, very clever. What I think I really like about learning about the things we already know but don't have labels for yet. The lists of biases, for example, were things we subconciously paid attention to but not something we could openly address. "Oh yeah, that's what they call it these days" was a imageless thought scrolled through my head quite frequently. I also really enjoy how this textbook is written, so many things to look at, to catch our attention, to keep us interested... it's as if these psychologists authors had known exactly the best way to translate their knowledge to us based on their own knowledge of information conception. Genius. This is why math sucks. I'm talking about the crazy pictures, you know, the Obama one and then the differences between American and Chinese visual focus one--loads of good stuff, can't miss it and yeah i feel intrigued. Good job, Lillenfield. But here's where it picks up.

Relgion, now that's a touchy topic. I love how respectful they are of it, too. Like, its not scientific, it cannot be proven because its based on faith, but it even has its own cute little definition: metaphysics LOL. If I didn't know better, (and believe me, there is definitely a God) but i'd say that because there is no way to PROVE religion, no evidence and they're basically saying religion is crap. Almost like a branch of pseudoscience. But to show their seperate values, we have a cute little diagram: Nonoverlapping realms, thank god for Gould, created some equality around here. And slyly, the authors divert and transist into Psuedoscience, yeah lets pick on the diet plans and superstitions.  "uuuh, ok. I know you didnt like the religion jokes but you're gonna love these! ummm-- what about those horoscopes, eh guys?  like, is that science or what? hehehe wow, tough crowd." Lillenfeld, you're killin us, man.

These examples of pseudos are harsh, but they address each variation pretty well. I am really going to start paying more attention to these clear-skinned teens in those Proactive ads, they coulda just used a marker to blotch up those pretty little hollywood faces. It really went on about how oblivious we are to temptations. That Lincoln/Kennedy chart blew my mind, but it was so cool. We are so quick to look at the similarities and quick to dismiss nonrelations. I'm sure we could conjure up a billion differences between the two assassinations and they wouldn't mean anything because i'm already hooked on this divine calling for presidential souls. Next we have the Big 6 (Scientific Thinking Principles), which are also very helpful throughout the book, que bueno. Kinda overdooing it here, lets cut this blog a lil short today. I'm sure Ms. Osmundson doesnt have time for all of my random shinanigans. But i'm almost done!

Taking a crack at Modern Psych was a wise move, highlighting what IS scientificly accepted and what isn't will breed independent thinkers with the aid of the Big 6, not customers of cultural bs. Learning about the Fathers of Psych was a tad confusing but i'll get over it. Something tells me we will be criticizing Freud a lot in this class. Lets top this Chapter 1 banna split with a little cherry of psychology application and how it functions in society via advertisements, educational placement tests, and suspect line-ups. Please, spare us the fire trucks! We've been taken over by a coffee sipping, scarf wearing, fedora bearing, people-watching illuminati. excellent.
And that's a good way to rap Chapter 1 up, tie it into our daily lives via our predecesors in this wonderful field and BAM you sir have yourself the best psych textbook in the state of minnesota. So far, feelin damn good about the content, about the class, and how this is going to further affect the tough decisions i'll have to make in my undetermined life, but better yet, how it will mold my decisions for a more productive second semester in Psychology 101. Hows that for tying THIS BLOG into my daily life? Take it, Lillenfeld!

Day 1, oh boy

Miss Osmundon asks,

What personal strengths will help you to accomplish your academic goals for this class? How can you best tap into leverage and those strengths to support your success?

What skills or personal qualities do you think you need to improve on in order to be successful?
If you have taken other college-level, CIS/AP courses, what have you learned about yourself by taking those courses? What have you learned about learning, studying, and time management? And Marco Riley responds:



So heres the deal, I'm on the internet all the time, Facebooking, listening to Pandora, watching hulu videos. I totally 100% agree with having a majority of this class' content online because I will already be online. I'm not saying I'm not going to read the book, because I know I'll love the book. My peers have had their psychology books open last semester and I may have browsed through them while they weren't looking. Lots of pictures, captions, columns--the works! All the random facts and experiments as well as the hardcore content, should I fear this textbook? I'll admit, my strengths definitely aren't the reading aspect of any class, however, discussion such as this handy-dandy blog will make sense of the content i'll soon absorb along with my classmates. I'm pretty thankful that this class utilizes all forms of technology to help its students learn, and there's no doubt that I will be learning more because if it.

By that last question, I'm getting the feeling that I will be reading a lot. Yes, I have a short attention span, and yes that most definitely hinders my reading ability.

Blogs are the spot to be honest, and Miss Osmundon, it's time to be straight up. Yes, this is my 3rd CIS class of high school. Public speaking I passed with a A- and econ with a C+, granted the "Read the Textbook" was absolute for econ and...."optional" in PS, however I loved PS and econ was always a struggle. I have a very open mind about CIS PSYCH, and am prepared to work hard. I think i can make this real to me, i when i think of something, I always ask "Why, why do we do what we do, and what caused us to react and thus continually act in the way that we do? Where was the catalyst and what nudged that in the first place. Where did it all begin?" And this explodes and can be asked in anything, but I'm thinking of culture. What pushed and crafted the people of today to believe and live how they do? The subtle geography? The Christian religion...I'm tangenting big-time. But isn't it rambling that catches loose ends? The quickest route to knowledge regurgitation? I think i'm on to something brilliant here. You know what? Better yet, let me release this philisophical beast in class; we'll be talking about something important before the test, than you'll say something really deep and BAM you can't shut me up. Get ready to have your mind blown by humble Marco.
Econ, i got the teacher to like me through this active participation, stayed after class to wrap up some last thoughts, and yet would still not be able to get the trophy A on the paper, and consistantly B/C'ed every test. Ok it's true, i didnt read the textbook despite the author's attempt to enthuse me with the bolded text and monotonous graphs, I remained unenlightened and ignorant to Loiselle's exaggerations.  Yet in PS, Ms. Barbone knew that she was dealing with a crew of smart kids who were adept to public speaking, as i belive myself to be. Pickin up the A- in that class was a challenge but nontheless my most fond memory of high school to date, not because it's the only A i've gotten, but because of the grade i pushed myself to get. I am going to like this class, i know i will, you can't stop me. I know I have the resources and the desire to do well, and because of my super chill schedule, this class will be a priority unlike the neglected econ class. So Ms. Osmundon, i know you're going to challenge me, and here comes the cliche response, i'm up to the challenge.