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Friday 24 August 2012

BSc (Hons) Psychology

Kelty
This is one of my favourite subjects to write about, not only do I study it for my degree, but it’s a subject that I’m really passionate about (as geeky as that makes me sound). I previously did a blog about the first year modules (http://gre-kelty.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/year-in-life-of-first-year-psychology.html) but I haven’t actually spoken much about the modules I did in my second year, so it’s about time I start :). Just be aware though, that my opinions of the modules are just that, my opinions, everyone is different and some of the modules I hated, my friends loved, and vice versa, so it’s always best to experience/research them yourself  in order to form your own opinions :)

Having done psychology for A level, I had a good basis for starting the first year, as I was already familiar with a lot of the key studies like Milgram, Bolwby, Piaget, Zimabardo etc…although A Level psychology isn’t a requirement for the course, so if you haven’t done it I would suggest just getting a general psychology book before you start and brushing up on the most famous studies, as those studies do crop up repeatedly throughout your first year, and even your second!

So anyway, having already had that basic knowledge of psychology from my A level, I began to think the course was a bit of a breeze and managed to coast through my first year without encountering anything too challenging, and I naively thought that the second year was going to be equalling unchallenging. Yet, within the first couple of weeks starting the second year, I began to realise just how wrong I was. Not only were the subjects harder and more in depth, the standard of work we were expected to produce had rose dramatically, yet the time we had to it in had decreased!!  In January we had 3 assignments due in, in the space of 3 days!!

In second year we weren’t allowed to pick what modules we studied, as certain ones are essential to study if you want to be eligible to register with the BPS (British Psychological Society) once you graduate. In line with this we studied 4 modules, Brain, Behaviour and Cognition, Research Methods 2, Individual Differences and Abnormal Psychology and Developmental and Social Psychology.

Research Methods 2, was set out very similar to the Research Methods from the first year. We had to complete 3 lab reports again, although one was qualitative rather than the quantitative ones we had gotten so used to. This was a bit of a shock to the system so to speak, as it had to be researched and laid out in a very different way to the other ones we had to do. The main differences between the two, is that quantitative revolves around a hypothesis and you collect data which can be analysed statistically to support your hypothesis or not. Whereas a qualitative one, has research questions rather than an hypothesis, and the data you collect is ‘rich’ data (i.e. words not numbers) normally collected through methods such as interviews, or diaries, and then the data is coded and analysed in a very different way. The statistics part of this course was slightly different as well, as in first year the majority of it was all hand calculations and then looking up whether the results were significant in various tables etc, whereas in second year, the emphasis was on analysing the results from an SPSS output (A statistics programme, similar to excel but more advanced!) rather than having to work it out for ourselves, which sounds easier but believe me, when you have like 6 different tables to look through just for one little piece of information it can become confusing.

The next module was Brain, Behaviour and Cognition. This was probably my least favourite modules of the last two years, as it is very heavily science based as it involved neuroscience and learning about various parts of the brain and neurons and nerves etc. I’m not a very sciency person by nature, I’ve always excelled in Maths, but when it comes to science I just tend to switch off and let all of those technical terms wash over me, that’s not to say the course wasn’t interesting, as it was, especially learning about why we forget and things like that, it was just a little bit too technical for me. Because of my diminished interest in this module, it was also the module I got the lowest grades in, just managing to scrap a 2.1, although I think the only reason I even managed that was partly due to some of the assessments within this being easier than others, as we had to do a reflective account of what we had learnt from the course and others, as well as a reflective assignment, based around a question we had devised ourselves. Both of which were slightly easier than the essays we had to do based around neuroscience topics. One good thing about this course though, was that there was no exam wooooh.

Developmental and Social Psychology was another module we studied. This was split over two terms, with the first term being devoted to developmental, and the second term social. I really enjoyed this course, as besides being interesting and focusing around a person’s development from a baby to adult, the only assignment we had for the developmental side of things, was a portfolio consisting of 10 questions from all aspects of developmental psychology. This assignment was worth 50% of the module so doing really well on it would give a big boost overall and personally I’d much rather do one big assignment and focus all my time and energy on that, rather than 3 or 4 essays only worth 10% each. The social side of the course was really interesting as well, as we learnt things such as how and why stereotypes are formed and people’s attitudes towards certain things. I especially liked the crowd behaviour topic as it tied in directly with the London riots from last summer, so it made it more relatable than some of the other topics. Our assessments for this side of the course, consisted of how to complete a research assistant job application and a three hour seen exam. A seen exam means that you get given the questions about 2 weeks before the exam and then you have to prepare and memorise the answers for it. This particular exam required us to answer 3 completely different questions and write them in three hours!! Needless to say, my hand hurt sooo much afterwards!! Despite the exam, I enjoyed the social side of the course so much I decided to pick it as one of my third year modules.

The final module we studied was Individual Differences and Abnormal Psychology. Again I found this course really interesting as part of it revolved around mental health, which is an area which really interests me because of the diversity and complexity of it. This module was very article/journal based, whereby we had to read at least one article a week and then discuss and critique it, as well as writing a critical review about a specific personality journal, which was something the majority of us had never encountered before, although having started on my dissertation, I can see why it is a very handy skill to have!! Besides the critical review we also had to complete 2 mini essays, as well as another seen exam. I found this exam to be a lot easier than the Social one, as this one was only 90minutes long, and we only had to prepare two answers, which is a lot easier to memories than 3 extra long ones!!

So that pretty much sums up my second year :) I’m really looking forward to starting my third year, as all the courses I’ll be studying will be of my own choosing!! Besides my dissertation/third year project which is compulsory, and is pretty much the same as a lab report, except 10x the length and you have to come up with the study on your own! But it’s worth 45 credits over all, so just over a third of the course!! So I’m going to put in as much effort as I can into it!!

If you have any more questions about psychology or any of our other courses we offer here, you can check out our website on www.gre.ac.uk or give us a call on 020 8331 9000  and we’ll try to answer all of your questions :)

Bye for now xx

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