This class as a whole has taught me to interconnect all facets of a person’s personality when determining treatment for them. The course seems like it would be most helpful in that regard to someone in the field of medicine. The emotions and background information on certain types of diseases was helpful from therapeutic standpoint so that the psychologist can better treat the patient knowing where some of the possible negative emotions are stemming from. If I went into this field, this class would prompt me research any illnesses my patients discussed with me so I could better understand the next steps in supporting and healing them.
As an overall lessen of the class, we learned that stress is the number one thing to stain all areas of life and the more conscientious someone is the better one will be able to handle life’s big and little struggles. The personal behavior project helped me see the benefit of accountability with peers and written goals to make a positive change in my life. The research project we conducted helped me learn how to evaluate qualitative data, as I have only handled quantitative, and how to properly conduct an interview, though I wish we could have conducted more, shorter interviews as to actually handle the occurrence of data saturation.
The longevity project novel I will admit I didn’t care for. I think passages of it would have been useful for homework readings but the entire book became repetitive and needlessly drawn out in my opinion. Plus there are certain findings that I would have loved to have the opportunity to research more, possibly doing a literature review of the current research on a topic the book covered would be interesting.
I appreciate the range of careers of the speakers we saw. Everyone from a athletic trainer to psychologists reviewing patients for medical surgeries. It helped show how wide spread the application of this field is. I wish we had had the opportunity to hear from a psychologist using Health Psychology to interact with minorities specifically (I know that one of the speakers at the career talk was focusing on studying that but she is still in the early stages of that research and we didn’t get to hear as much about that specific patient interaction with her).
The group presentation really helped give a full picture of why a minority has a higher rate of certain diseases instead of just memorizing some statistics. We were able to really dig into the causes of the higher rates in these groups and get a better sense of how to treat and educate these communities instead of just adopting a one size fits all solution.
The meaningful breaks were really nice, especially because Mondays I don’t have an opportunity to take a break at all between 7-4PM. I found that the time we were allowed to just relax on our own, watch the comedy bit, and when there was a puppy were the most beneficially to me (guided imagery and the muscle relaxation never feels very relaxing to me.