I always appreciate the opportunity to talk to people in the field that I’m interested in going to, so I would say we should continue to have this kind of event not only for this class but also classes in psychology department.
It’s very rewarding to hear people from the real world. For example, people can’t help but hold the stereotype that people must be really good at what are preaching. Like, psychologist must be very strong in personality and they won’t have any mental illness, or health psychologist must practice all the healthy behaviors that they studied about. This idealistic point of view toward a certain profession could be intimidating to the prospective candidates. For me, I think if I cannot eat healthy every meal and never miss a 7 hours of sleep, how am I qualified to preach them to others. However, on the contrary, I heard the voice from the real world that none of the three professionals said they were able to keep practicing all the healthy life habits even they were aware of them and studied about them everyday. As they showed me the realistic picture, I was more likely to think of my future career with the perfect attitude.
I think the arguments about technology and health practices were very interesting. We headed voices from both sides. For me, I don think the we should be careful dehumanization and how much we want to go in terms of protecting privacy. It’s true that technology will help a lot along the way; however, some ethical conversations are needed, too.
For the class and lab experience overall, I think it’s a very unique opportunity for us to have a smaller class size. At first, I was not used to comments on every thing we touched on or write reflection on each chapter every week. However, I saw the benefits of them through the time. It pushed me to think critically about the topic and the class atmosphere encouraged me to ask anything I did not fully understand. As an international student, I became more comfortable to speak up in class and also to write reflections in English. It’s not always the case in my other classes. Therefore, I really appreciated what I experienced in this class.
Regarding what we learned, I love how the health psychology field has a focus on health instead of treating disease. After all, most of us are in the relatively healthy stage of life in the most of the time; however, people tend to not care of themselves but focus on the disease when it’s already late. The complexity of human nature and health disparities in different races offered me important lens to think of myself and also the outside world, that will benefit me in the long run.