Blog 10

My initial course expectations were that this course would contain more interactive discussion based participation with other students, but instead this course is more based on individual participation (blog style).  I do think that I would have preferred to have had a more interactive class with the other online students since this is Social Psychology.  I was surprised that this class was designed without that even though it is an online course.

I feel that I have achieved the course objects best that I could for having multiple assignments to juggle while also creating this blog.  I do feel that I could have worked much harder on certain assignments and that I did miss some blog posts over the course of the class which could have been prevented.

I feel that my attitudes towards this course have changed since the first day.  I have slowly began to become more interested in the course matter, but I do miss having the ability to talk to other students about in through group discussion boards.

Moving forward I would suggest keeping the individual blog, but adding the ability to share everyones blogs on a discussion board for peer reviews or advice that way you can get more out of the class.

I have grown more academically over the past few months due to pushing myself to take a much harder curriculum while also working full time.  I think I have learned a lot about my limits as student and my strengths by pushing myself.

One skill that I have gained from this course is being able to manage a blog and how to create content for it.  I think this will be very beneficial to me moving forward into a marketing career.

Visual Image:

I chose this image to represent my journey of finishing out my bachelors degree, granted I have been trying to finish it since 2015.  It has been a long time coming, but I remind myself with each class I am a little closer to finishing and feeling proud of how far I have come.

Blog 9

Over this course I have learned a lot about human relationships, emotions, and how small things such as aggression and love play an important role in our development as people.

Once of the most fascinating concepts that I have learned about in this course was the idea of cognitive dissonance from chapter 5.  The idea that we change our minds when we feel that we cannot justify our idea with solid evidence to support why we feel that way.  I do this all the time when I am asked why I feel so strongly about something but I am unable to explain why.  When I feel like this I end up just letting it go and agreeing that my idea was dumb or irrelevant, even if I don’t feel that way deep down.

Another interesting concept that I have learned while being in this course was in chapter 8 where it talked about conformity.  Conformity is a large part of human nature.  We all feel the need to belong and usually that means intergrading our own beliefs with the society as a whole.  The subsection “How much we really conform?” was very intriguing and I learned/understood more as to why people conform.  Such as we conform subconsciously with what is trending; fashion, lingo, etc.

This previous chapter covered aggression and talked about the frustration-aggression hypothesis which was very fascinating.  This hypothesis talked about two principles 1) that frustration ultimately leads to some form of aggression and 2) that aggression is caused by some underlying form of frustration.  This hypothesis feels really relatable to me because I feel that whenever I am frustrated I end up getting more hostile and vice versa when I am hostile I get more frustrated.

Visual Image: Includes my highlights from sections of my textbook.  Whenever I find something fascinating and important I highlight it in yellow.

Blog 5

 

 

Blog 4

When looking over my test I noticed that the questions I missed were mainly due to me second guessing myself.  I felt really confident when taking the test overall and had spend days creating a study to help me consolidate the information I felt was the most important for each chapter.  After looking over the exam and figuring out which chapter the questions I missed were covering I discovered that all three question came from Chapter 4: The Self.  I will admit that this chapter was much more conceptual and I did have a harder time understanding and piecing together the content it covered so I can see why those were the questions I missed.  Moving forward with the next exam I am going to make sure to pay extra attention to chapters or sections I feel less confident in so that I can prevent allowing myself the option to second guess my answers.

To represent how I feel when I second guess my answers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blog 2

I have always been the quiet student type.  The girl that sits at the front of class and rarely speaks out unless I know 100% I have the correct answer.  This is not to discredit that I am not confident in my abilities as a student, but I am simply quiet because I do not feel the need to draw attention to myself.  I put a lot of time and effort into my schooling, both in the classroom/online and at home.

I have learned that my optimal time for being productive with school is bright and early till mid afternoon, so I have tried to schedule my classes between the morning and early afternoon each semester.  This strategy has worked fairly well up until I transfered to Old Dominion.  I have found that the classes that I need have been fairly spread out over the day ranging from from 8am to 6pm.  This semester I have been forced to schedule a class starting at 4:20pm and it has definitely been hurting my ability to study once I get home around 7pm.  In order to combat this and keep up my ability to be productive I have been getting up an hour earlier to commute to school and study from 7:30 till my 9am class.

My self-confidence as a student has increased over the years of being in college, but I still get a wave of anxiety every time I sit down to take an exam.  I have always suffered from testing anxiety and second guessing my answers when it comes to multiple choice.  I can be extremely confident in an answer and then see a question related to the same topic and start doubting my original selection.  To combat this I have started not allowing myself to change an answer once I have placed it on the scantron.  If I have any doubt in my selection I will place a star next to the question and move on.  This strategy has been improving my confidence in my ability to test well and feel more positivity towards my answers.

My results for self-efficacy survey were fairly high in all sections with an overall average of a 93.8.  In the “Believe in your ability” section I scored a 90.  In the “Ability to grow with effort” I scored a 100.  I study extremely hard for school.  I re-read notes, make study guides, re-read the textbooks and also practice a lot.  I have always known that in order to grow you must put the effort in to learn.

My representative image for this week is my self-efficacy test results because I feel that they best reflect me as a student.

Blog 1

The course objectives outline very important key elements that our class will cover over these 16 weeks.  Sociology is very relevant to working in my everyday job as well as the career field I am currently pursuing.  I have worked in the customer service industry for many years and being able to understand human behavior, human interaction, relationships, prejudice and discrimination are all very important to my fieldwork.  These principles will go on to further help me in my future marketing jobs.

My expectations for this course are to gain more knowledge and specific understanding about how much social interaction shapes us and possibly dictates our everyday lives.  I have always been fascinated with how each interaction you have with someone can be setting you on a specific path.  I plan to take very detailed notes, using the book to gather much of my information, and using the PowerPoints to clarify anything I may have missed.  In order to ensure my success in this class, I also plan to be very prepared for each examination and use my assignments, blogs, and artifacts as ways to deepen my knowledge of each chapter.

For my representative image I looked to Chapter 2 and decided on the concept: Activities Aimed at Regulating Our Negative Moods

In Chapter 2, our book discussed the idea that people are drawn to activities that “regulate” our negative moods.  That as humans we tend to gravitate towards more distracting behaviors when they are feeling overwhelmed, stressed, or depressed such as shopping, drinking, and even cheating.  I came across this little comic about a year ago and it just fit this chapter so well.  I loved how these two fish wanted to pretend to be humans and even then they resorted to going drinking alcohol and going shopping.