Sur­viv­ing Psy­chol­ogy

MISH­WAKA— Many stu­dents find that the study of psy­chol­ogy is in­trigu­ing, but it is also very dif­fi­cult. A few years ago, a group of stu­dents set about to start a once-per-se­mes­ter sem­i­nar that would help other stu­dents with tips and point­ers for sur­viv­ing some of the more dif­fi­cult courses.  

This year the sem­i­nar was held on Feb. 4. 

“We find that typ­i­cally af­ter the first test in some of our up­per-level classes stu­dents don’t nec­es­sar­ily do as well,” said Dr. Norm Spivey, pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­ogy. “The psych club of­fi­cers... es­sen­tially just kind of run a lit­tle sem­i­nar and kind of de­scribe, ‘here’s this class, here’s how I stud­ied for it, and here are the tips that I can give  you.’” 

Spivey said that they have con­sid­ered mov­ing the sem­i­nar to come af­ter the sec­ond test in­stead of af­ter the first test, be­cause he’s no­ticed that many stu­dents who don’t do well on the first test tend to think that they can take care of im­prov­ing fu­ture scores them­selves. 

“It’s a lit­tle frus­trat­ing for me at times when I don’t see as many stu­dents take ad­van­tage of it,” said Spivey. “We’re try­ing to pro­vide op­por­tu­nity, try­ing to pro­vide a way for stu­dents to get bet­ter.” 

Spivey said that over the years, the stu­dents have added de­tails such as power-point pre­sen­ta­tions to help the sem­i­nar be more fun and in­ter­ac­tive. 

Car­son Bollinger, a fresh­man psy­chol­ogy ma­jor, at­tended the sem­i­nar. 

“They had food there, so that’s al­ways re­ally nice,” said Bollinger. “Get­ting a grasp on the other teach­ers that I haven’t had yet, that was re­ally nice... I also liked how open and re­laxed it was.”  

This year the stu­dent pre­sen­ters were Dalena Had­dock, who dis­cussed so­cial psy­chol­ogy and cog­ni­tive psy­chol­ogy; Ash­ley Baugh­man, who dis­cussed bi­o­log­i­cal psy­chol­ogy; and Eric Freel, who dis­cussed ab­nor­mal  psy­chol­ogy.  

“What was so ex­cit­ing for me is that this was gen­er­ated by stu­dents,” said Spivey. “It was­n’t some­thing that I said, ‘you need to do this,’ no, they came up with it them­selves and have done a pretty good job of pro­mot­ing it.” 

The next sem­i­nar will be in the fall. 

“If you have any dif­fi­culty, I re­ally rec­om­mend go­ing,” said Bollinger. “They help im­mensely, and you can grow closer to peo­ple.”