It appears that my body is determined to give me the college
experience of functioning on minimal sleep, as I woke up before 6:00 this
morning. Unable to fall back asleep, I ended up going on a short run, in which
I got caught in a downpour. This was an exciting start to the morning.
As planned, Shrija, Brandon and I all walked to class
together, along with another girl named Joyce. Our class is in Harper Memorial,
which luckily is very close to the dining hall and dorms, so we made it with
plenty of time. We filled out notecards about ourselves while waiting for class
to begin.
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| On the way to class |
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| Our classroom! |
Our instructor is Cassie Freeman and our TA is Rebecca
Frausel. So far, I like both of them a lot. Cassie is very encouraging and
supportive, but I can also tell that she expects us to be scholarly students. Our
class is fourteen students, and we are all girls except Brandon. Most of the students
seem eager to participate, and I think group discussions will be very
interesting.
After brief introductions and a viewing of the muppets on
Youtube, Cassie started teaching. We began with a broad overview of the course
and syllabus, as well as how to use Chalk, which is the website we’ll use to
turn in homework and get assignments. The next topic we covered was ethics, and
why it’s especially important for psychology. Because psychology experiments
could potentially have serious impact on the state of the participants, it’s
crucial to be clear on consent and assent of participants, as well as understanding
deception and reporting. We talked about two cases, the Milgram experiment and
the Stanford Prison Experiment, and why they exemplify the need for ethics
consideration in psychology.
Moving on from ethics, Cassie started to discuss the actual
topic of developmental psychology. We went
over the process of development, and the many different research methods and
their strengths and limits. The primary focus of our class will be to conduct a
research project on an area and developmental psychology, so it’s important
that we understand how to do this. We’ll be working in small groups for this
project, and we spent the last half of class figuring out our groups and
topics. The topics our class was interested in were moral development,
identity, and social development. I chose to be in the social development group
with two other girls, Grace and Cathy. We began discussing possibilities for
our project, but haven’t decided anything definitive yet.
Class passed by very quickly, and although it was three hours
it only felt like one. Additionally, we got the afternoon off from class
because Cassie is getting her PhD this afternoon! It’s sort of nice that for
our first class we only have a half day; this way we have plenty of time for
our homework. Indeed, Shrija, Brandon and I all met up in the fifth floor
lounge after lunch to get started. Tonight’s homework wasn’t too challenging,
just a quick writing assignment about ethics, reading about formatting, and
some textbook reading. We managed to complete the majority of it before 4, and
decided to take a break to go to the Ratner Athletic Center.
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| Ellipticals at Ratner |
The intended purpose of our trip to Ratner was to pump up my
soccer ball, but as this was unattainable and we couldn’t find another soccer
ball to use, we chose to spend a short time on the elliptical before heading
back to the dorms. I decided it was time to do some laundry, a task I’d been a
little nervous about. Luckily, I was able to successfully wash and dry my
clothes with no trouble, and even managed to practice flute during the process.
In the evening, Jill led a trip to CVS and frozen
yogurt on 53rd. I attended in order to obtain some necessities from
CVS, then shuttled back with Shrija. The weather had become unbearably hot and
sticky, so when we got back to campus I decided to take a quick trip to the
pool. I had to rush, since we got back at 8:00 and the pool closes at 8:45, but
it was extremely refreshing to swim some laps and take advantage of the
facility.
Ratner Athletic Center and the pool are located on the north
end of campus, while our dorms are in the south. On my walk back from the pool
I decided to pop in the Regenstein Library, something I’d been meaning to
investigate for a while. It is a fortress of books and study space, and I’ll
definitely have to explore more some other time. Mansueto Library attaches to
the Regenstein and has a very cool, domed design. As I made my way back to the
dorm from the library, there were lots of flashes in the sky and rumbling
noises, too. At first I thought it was helicopters or something, and then I saw
lightning flash and realized a storm was probably coming. I made it back to the
dorms just as it started to rain.
We have a full day of class tomorrow, and I want to be well
rested, so the plan is to get to bed early tonight. I look forward to tomorrow
and what I will discover.
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