High School Psychology Class...

Alright just got my High school (Senior year, yay!) Schedule and got almost all the classes I pick. But there is just one problem, they threw me in a Psychology class...

Well I was wondering if anyone here knows anything about Psychology. Sure its just a high school class but I'm just not sure I will stick with this class because it will require me to participate in a peer tutoring program in which I use the skills I learned during first semester on human learning and development and apply them in a school setting.

Sounds simple for most people but as for me I'm not a people person and I just dunno if this will work out so well for me so I want to kno what I'm getting myself or rather thrown into.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I took an intro psyc course in college and loathed it. Not only does the class suck, everyone was forced to do 5 hours of psychology experiments, all of which are boring computer surveys or something. I would think a high school psychology course wouldn't be any better. Basically if you enjoy learning a lot of material but without any depth, go for it. Otherwise I would drop it and pick another course, preferably a sport or art course. But please, not psychology. All it taught me was what we thought was obvious in first grade actually has a "scientific" term to it. It also taught me about various psychological disorders that are plain disturbing.

Of course, this is coming from someone who is not a psychology major. I'm sure they can give you a better (and more optimistic) insight into the field.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I took the class and had fun, but that was because I had an awesome teacher. My class wasn't hard, but we didn't have to really do anything outside of class, so maybe your's is harder. If you're not interested in it, then I say drop it and switch to something else. Take an art class or something. Those are always fun.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Psychology can be interesting because it can give you a small insight to how and why people act the way they do. I took a psychology 101 class, and enjoyed it for the most part (mostly cause the professor didn't make it too boring, and usually made references to current or recent events to help us understand it more (he referenced a movie I believe Jack Nicholson was in, where he had obsessive-compulsive disorder, and would do things such as unlocking and locking a lock 5 times, or washing his hands 3 times in a row, and showed us how the brain is functioning, or malfunctioning when stuff like that happens).

It'll mostly depend on how good the teacher is. A sucky teacher will make even your most interesting subject boring, while a good teacher will make a boring class fun and interesting. I learned that the average human can make out a candle from 30 miles away, and can hear a watch ticking in a silent room from the other side (unfortunately, I have tinnitus, which is that "ringing in your ear" that you get when you listen to stuff that's too loud, or from prolonged exposure to loud noises. Unfortunately for some people, they have it, and doctors aren't sure why, nor do they know how to fix that "feedback" problem in your ear if you have that condition).

In the class I went to, although we had a discussion section, where a classroom-sized group of about 15 students worked with a Teaching Assistant on the current week's topic, the lectures were optional (you didn't even need to go, so long as you read the book, but again, the professor made it interesting), and all the stuff where you can be a test subject and all that was extra credit if you did it (I wish they had done that study of playing video games helped surgeons to concentrate and perform better hehe, and it was announced around the time I took the class).

I also remember watching a video in the discussion section where a man was talking about optical illusions. He was standing in the left side of a room that looked the same as the right side, but as he walked towards the camera, and towards the right, he suddenly appeared to grow bigger and bigger, something that our brain found really strange. They then showed us why, cause the room was designed to look the same when viewed head on, but from an angle the left side was actually farther away.

They also talked about how people volunteered to wear goggles which would shift your vision to make everything appear upside down. After some initial confusion and learning (I think it took a few days for their brains to adjust to that), the volunteers were able to pour coffee into a cup and catch a ball with the goggles on. When they took them off, their brains had to readjust, cause they were used to seeing stuff upside down.

I'm probably not going to be much more convincing than this, and if you're not interested in this stuff, chances are you probably don't care much for it. But that's okay, cause not everyone's wired the same and interested in the same stuff. But psychology is interesting, and you can learn some interesting things that could stick with you (I bet everyone here remembers exactly where they were when 9/11 happened. That's a case of crystallized memory, a memory which pretty much is stuck in your head, because of the significance of that day, and there aren't too many events like that happening nowadays. You may not remember too much, but chances are good you remember 9/11, your first day at school, or when got your first kiss. That's why people may seem like idiots sometimes, but then they can recall some events very clearly, as if it happened yesterday).

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I took an introductory psychology course a few semesters ago and thought it was interesting. Like Dee mentioned, we were each required to participate in a few hours of research, but it only involved filling out surveys for the graduate students. The subject wasn't difficult at all, but my professor also designed the class so that memorizing the lecture notes was enough to do well on exams. She knew the subject well, but her approach didn't give students an opportunity to ask many questions. The class also had about 300+ students.

We studied disorders and basic structures in the brain responsible for sleeping, learning, and the like. There were some interesting areas during the semester, but because of the professor, I don't plan on taking more psychology courses than I need to.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I have an A-Level in psychology and I'm going to uni to study it into degree level. I personally love it, the insight you get into how the human mind works, how to overcome problems and phobias and study why certain people did or do certain things intrests me.
So far I've conducted a memory experiment to see whether a persons short term memory can fit so many words in there and if you can recall them after being asked to recite a nursery rhyme, slightly boring but funny watching people sing bah, bah black sheep.
I've also studied disorders, the learning, physiological, psychodynamic, cognitive, humanistic and social approaches that try to explain them etc etc.
I also loved it because I had a brilliant teacher that made it fun to learn. Its hard work, well mine was but well worth the effort and time.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Psychology was the biggest mistake in my life. Only take it if you're thinking of going into the field of psychology as your major. Otherwise it's just annoying memorization. You'd think they'd go into something interesting like human thought, sleep cycles and dreams, relationships between humans and how to interpret them right? No, you learn about boring crap like how we hear and see. And they don't even actually go into it, it's like we see because of our optics center, now moving on. So you skim and skim, the stupid subject shouldn't even be considered a science.

But if you're going into the field I hear it's very interesting. By 3rd and 4th year university you learn really cool things, especially experimental psychology and abnormal psychological disorders. If you're not, get OUTTA THERE before the hellspawn kills you.

FELIPE NO

I've had to take a few child psych classes since I'm going to become a teacher (gotta know how them little brains tick). The classes I took so far were interesting but its really the luck of the draw. Some teachers are easy and others are tough.

How ya doing, buddy?

I took AP Psychology in 11th grade and it wasn't as interesting as I thought it would be. Maybe because it was an AP class and the teachers just wanted to get the materials covered asap so we were assigned to read 60-70 pages a week and make chapter outlines. Basically, I found that I knew a lot of the stuff in the textbook already (since it's mostly based on common knowledge and observation), but just didn't know the right names and terms for certain conditions. As splur mentioned, a lot of the content is on biology.

Jam it back in, in the dark.