Evaluations and Reflections

                As the year is beginning to come to a close, it’s time to reflect on the courses and professors of the semester. In class, we fill out professor evaluation forms to assess the success in the professor of many categories including enthusiasm for teaching, how they convey material, and how the course was run overall. I’m leaving out many things, of course. There are about twenty questions about the professor and then it goes on to ask what class you’re in, your major, things like that. On the back of the evaluation, you are given the opportunity to write briefly about the professor and the course. These evaluations are extremely helpful in ensuring that Clark University maintains a high standard for their professors. What I have found this semester and the one previous is that my professors are really great at what they do. They are all very knowledgeable on course material and make themselves available to any concerns or needs of students.

                Psychology has been extremely interesting this week in particular. We’ve been learning about developmental psychology. Today, we talked a bit about children’s attachment to their caregivers. (Caregivers is used because the person who cares most for a child may not necessarily be the parent of that child.) There are two kinds of attachment: secure and insecure. About 65% of children in the United States have secure attachment to their parents while the other approximate 35% have an insecure attachment. If a child has a secure attachment to their parents, it means that they will explore freely in the presence of their caregiver, be upset when that caregiver leaves, and greet them warmly once that caregiver has returned. Insecure attachments have many different categories which can range from children being extremely upset when their caregiver leaves to hardly noticing the separation. When that caregiver returns, reactions may vary from resistance to seeming to be oblivious to the presence of their caregiver. This may not be interesting to everyone, but I think it’s cool how psychologists can classify children’s behavior and even make predictions, based on this data, of how these kids will interact with their own children when they are parents.

                In economics, we’re continuing to discuss macroeconomics. Currently, we are discussing topics such as unemployment rates and today we briefly touched on what it means for a country to be “developed.” Of course, there are only a couple of weeks of the course dedicated to macroeconomics, so everything we’ve been learning is on an extremely general level. I like that, though, because it allows me to decide if I have interest in the material and if I would like to seek out more courses in the future so that I can learn in greater detail. What I am discovering is that I have a much keener interest in microeconomics than macroeconomics, but I will keep an open mind and possibly take more macroeconomics classes in the future.

                Well, this entry is already starting to get on the longer side, so I suppose now would be a good time to come up with a closing topic. This is one of my final entries as a first-year student at Clark. I’d like to thank you for taking the time to read my blog and learn a little bit more about what life is like at Clark University. I hope you have found my information and insight to be useful and please do not hesitate to send me a message through this blog if there’s anything additional you’d like to know about my experience which I have not covered in my entries.

Spring Has Sprung: Beginning Wrap Up the Year

                I’m relieved to tell you that spring has finally sprung here at Clark University. The sun’s shining, flowers are being planted around campus, and The Green is actually green. It’s wonderful. The only down side is that finals are approaching which means a lot more studying – most of which, unfortunately, is done indoors. Yes, there are people who read outside, but for writing papers, inside is really the best place.

                Anyway, the paper I’m working on is for managerial communications. I’m sure I’ve stated this in almost every entry, but my paper is discussing the differences in motivation between paid and volunteer workers. What I’m finding is that pay really doesn’t have very much influence in motivating workers to reach their potential. It will get them out of bed to get to work every day, but if someone doesn’t have other motivators, they will put in the minimal effort to get their paycheck at the end of the week. Along with the paper, I will be giving a PowerPoint present to the class which will discuss the same things. The difference is that I am choosing what kind of audience I want to address and adjust my presentation accordingly. I am going to be speaking to managers of both volunteer and paid workers since I have found that my research is equally applicable to both groups of workers.

                In economics, we’re beginning to touch on macroeconomics. Literally, we’ve just started, so I don’t have too much information I can tell you about the topic. For the majority of this semester, we have been focusing on microeconomics, but because this is an introductory course, it’s important that both major divisions of economics are covered. What we are starting to talk about is GDP and how that changes from year to year. There are factors that make data less clear such as inflation and right now we are learning about how to measure GDP on the same scale for each year. I apologize for being vague, but truthfully, I don’t know enough right now to go into further detail.

                Psychology is focusing on the development of children. It’s really cool. We’ve learned about the development from the joining of egg and sperm to birth and now we’re discussing the rate at which babies learn different things. One element studied is conservation. That means if we have two of the same size glasses filled with the same amount of liquid, if one glass is emptied into another shape glass, do we know that the amount of liquid has remained constant? Yes. We know that. However, this skill takes time for children to develop. Their intuition tells them that a taller glass must hold more liquid because the level of liquid is higher. There are lots of other examples of tasks which children are tested on, but I particularly liked that example.

                Course registration has come and gone and I got into all of the classes I mentioned last week! It’s such a relief when you’re worried about classes filling up, you send in your request, and then the web page says you have successfully registered for the class. It eliminates so many stresses. Well, I’m looking forward to getting out and enjoying this beautiful weather. I hope you have the chance to do the same and have a great week. Thanks for reading.

Choosing Classes & Majors -- The Year Isn't Over Yet!

                It’s hard to believe that there’s only one month left of this year. That said, my classes are getting into their last sections of material and course selection is going on next week. As you may imagine, it’s a rather stressful time of the year. It feels a lot more manageable than finals last semester, though. Maybe it’s because I’m taking better courses for me, but it may also be that I’m more adjusted to what’s expected of me in college.

One of the Clark University Lecture Halls

                Tomorrow is my third exam in economics. What I haven’t mentioned about my economics exams is that we take them in a different room than we normally meet for class. While not all classes take advantage of the opportunity to test elsewhere, it’s nice that there is the capability to move. My economics class has fifty students in it, so we move to a lecture hall for tests so no one is sitting next to each other. Cheating really isn’t a big problem here from my understanding, but it’s nice to remove the temptation altogether by relocating for exams.

                Also tomorrow is my second psychology discussion presentation. For the project, each member of my group had to do three trials of a traditional IQ test and a non-traditional IQ test. We tried to take different tests so we could best analyze which tests are more representative of intelligence. Surprisingly, I had a wide range of IQ scores when I took the traditional IQ test, ranging from 130 to 152. However, my non-traditional test seemed fairly consistent. I took an emotional IQ test. This attempted to rate my ability to deal with emotional situations and be perceptive of other peoples’ emotions. As I said, my scores were rather similar, ranging from 83% to 85%. I was a little surprised by this score, to tell you the truth. I see myself as a fairly perceptive person. My thoughts were that this test may be more accurate since my score remained the same from trial to trial. However, another member in my group had a large range of scores for the emotional IQ test and consistent scores for the traditional. It’s hard to determine which test would best represent intelligence. Perhaps a combination of the two is the best method. By the way, there are lots of other kinds of non-traditional tests. For example, there’s also a multiple-intelligence test which gives scores on different types of intelligence like spatial, musical, math, linguistic, etc. I think as far as non-traditional tests go, that’s the best one. Anyway, that’s basically what my group will be presenting in class tomorrow. Wish us luck!

                The last thing I’d like to talk about is course selection. As I’m going into my sophomore year, it’s time to start gearing towards what I’d like to major in. I think I’m mostly decided on psychology and economics. It’s strange to see how much my interests have changed over the years and I’m still trying to keep an open mind to my major changing. For now, though, I’m taking two psychology courses, an economics course, and a perspective requirement class. For psychology, I am hoping to take statistics and qualitative methods. In economics, I’ll be taking the course which comes after 010 – 011: Principles of Economics. It’s basically what I’ve been learning this semester, but more in depth and more math involved. Fun, right? The last class I’m planning to take is called Creative Actor. I’m looking forward to being involved in acting again. I was fairly involved with theater in high school, but I didn’t have the time to fit it in my schedule this year. The perspectives at Clark are actually a lot more interesting than I thought they would be and I’m really grateful for that.

Late March Forecast: New Fall Courses and Some Snow

                I don’t know what to do with New England weather. It’s the last day of March and we’re expecting snow this weekend! I’m hoping that it will be just barely warm enough that it will be rain instead. Yes, I do have a reason for bringing up the weather. It is in fact something I’d like to talk about, but it also serves as a nice segue into discussing my classes.

                In Economics yesterday, we started watching “An Inconvenient Truth.” Just as a quick recap, it’s a documentary made by Al Gore concerning global warming. My professor is an environmental economist and she wants us to watch this documentary through the lens of an economist. What exactly does that mean? Well, we’ve recently been discussing market failures and how the government can intervene to make the prices “right.”A market failure is simply when the market outcome is not “best” for society. Yes, it’s very vague, I know. Econ 011, a course I plan to take in the fall, goes into much more detail about what exactly makes a market outcome a market failure. Anyway, when looking at global warming, we can analyze the costs and benefits of not only things done to clean up the environment, but also the firms which are polluting our atmosphere. A firm with pollutants has negative externalities, which causes the price of their product to go down. This makes sense because if people know that a company is doing bad things to the environment, it will have less demand and will have to reduce its prices. We will finish watching the documentary tomorrow. I’m looking forward to what new connections I can draw from my knowledge of economics.

                Yesterday, I also had an exam in psychology. The material was pretty expansive, covering everything from language to intelligence to aggression. It’s really interesting to see the ways that our biology and our environment play specific roles in shaping how we develop. For example, we all have a basic ability to learn a language, but whether or not we can speak has a lot to do with our environment. In an extreme case, there was a young girl named Genie who was terribly abused by her parents for several years. She did not have the opportunity to learn language until she was a teenager and at that point, despite her efforts, she was unable to fluently speak a language. This is because there is a “sensitive period” of time in which we must learn our first language if we are to be able to at all. Of course, there are many other examples of how our environment supplements our biology which can affect things such as how aggressive we are, our IQ scores, and so on. I’m currently trying to decide what psychology class to take next semester, and I have no idea what to do. There are too many choices and they all seem really fascinating.

                In managerial communications, we continued our unit on crisis communication. To do this, our professor provided us with a hypothetical scenario of a CEO of a company who was caught in an affair with a young intern. Our job was to act as a representative of the company and deliver a short speech which would clear the name of the company. Our speeches were videotaped and we watched them in class to give each other constructive feedback on presentation techniques such as posture, confidence, etc. Once we had each given our presentations, our professor explained to us that the best way to clear the company’s name was to just make the story insignificant. Just move forward and don’t even mention what went on with the CEO. I was surprised by this initially, but it makes sense for a company to stay out of the personal matters of their employees.

                As I mentioned briefly, course selection is coming up. It’s rather difficult to determine what courses I’d like to take next semester because I am unsure if I’d like to major in economics, psychology, management, or double major in two of them. It’s also important that I fulfill perspective requirements. While this may seem unappealing, I only took economics because it was a perspective requirement and it turns out I really love it. Once I have a more finalized list of courses I’m interested in, I’ll talk about that process in more detail. Thanks for reading.

Spring Time - Warm Weather Coming, Decisions To Be Made...

                It’s finally Spring! While the weather’s a bit chilly in Worcester, the sun is out and there is no snow on the ground. That alone is a reason to celebrate.

                Another reason to celebrate is that the housing lottery is finally done. Every student gets a number – seniority gets the lower numbers. The lower your number is, the sooner you can choose a room. When it was time for soon-to-be sophomores’ numbers to be called, we gathered in the cafeteria with our laptops open. We had online access to watch which rooms were still available. This was organized by building, how many occupants for the room, and if there was anything specific (like an all-male floor, for example.) When I finally went up to select a room, I chose to get a single in Dodd Hall. This is an all-women dorm – the only one at Clark. I would have preferred to be in a co-ed dorm, but I wanted to experience living in a single. While having a roommate has many benefits, it’s nice to have solitary time sometimes. Also, I look forward to meeting people on my new floor and making friends beyond the group I already have.

Dodd Hall

                In psychology yesterday, we discussed motivation and emotion – a topic in which I have a rather keen interest. We talked about how actions are motivated and different things we do to maintain homeostasis. Homeostasis is when our body is essentially at a neutral state; the individual is not hungry, thirsty, or tired. When someone becomes hungry, for example, their body will cause a drive (hunger) and we will in turn react to reduce that drive (eat something). This raises the topic of obesity. I was particularly impressed with how my professor handled discussing such a touchy topic, especially in a class with a majority of females who may be more likely to be concerned about their weight. Professor Brown discussed biological things that may interfere with our body telling us we’ve eaten too much, but also told us about psychological reasons for obesity, such as social and cultural influences. Our culture, for example, puts a lot of emphasis on a beautiful woman being tall and thin whereas historically, if someone was overweight, it meant they could afford the luxury of not working; weight was a status.

                Now that I’ve been talking about weight, I feel I should mention the gym facilities at Clark. They really are fantastic. I go to the gym almost every day and I’ve never had a problem finding cardio equipment to use. Over winter vacation, the gym bought all new treadmills, ellipticals, exercise bikes, and other machines. It’s really nice that so many people can utilize the space and it’s in a rather convenient location as well. I live in Wright Hall, so the gym is right across the street. Some dorms are slightly further from the gym, but they’re all within ten minutes of walking.

Bickman Fitness Center Before Winter Break

                Of course, now that it’s spring, there will be fewer people in the gym and more people out on The Green. On a typical day, you’ll see a group of about six people throwing a Frisbee around. Others will jog around the perimeter of campus. Personally, I’d rather work out at the gym and then bring a good book with me to read at The Green. It’s a very spacious area, so there’s no problem with two or three Frisbee games going on while a collection of readers/loungers hang out in the grass. The Green definitely adds a lot of culture to Clark University and I’m fortunate to have that in the middle of a busy city.

                Next year, in the spring, I’ll need to declare my major. This is required for all sophomores at the end of the year. The process of changing majors is as simple as filling out paperwork. Of course, you have to fulfill the required courses, so trying to change from biology to Spanish might be more difficult if you’ve never taken a Spanish course. I am currently considering double-majoring in psychology and economics. I went to a short meeting today with several economics professors and they discussed the courses they are offering next year. It was a very informative meeting. I hope to go to more like it. Professors are really a terrific resource at Clark and they make themselves very accessible to students.