Week 9: Dear Future AP Psych Student...

Psych has gone by so fast! I wish it was a year course. All the information is super interesting and fun to learn about. If you are a future AP Psych student, then make sure you do not get behind on the vocabulary! It is not a lot if you do it day by day, but if you save it all for one day it makes for a miserable night. One of my favorite things we did in Psych was watch videos about things that relate to our unit. I found them so interesting, and it was cool to actually see what we were learning about. My favorite was Three Identical Strangers as shown above. There aren't any assignments I wish weren't part of the class because I feel like I learned from everything we did, but I do wish we would be given two days to do the content dig with just a partner. This way it is a small enough group you don't have any social loafers and with more time we can actually read about the unit instead of just skimming for the answer.

Week 8: Psych Memes

1.Social Impairment:


2.Authoritarian Parenting Style:


3.Door-in-the-face Phenomenon

4.Stereotypes

5.Ingroup Bias:

Week 7: Anything Blog

Growing up I have been around two special needs uncles. One is more of a level one, high functioning autism, which means he needs the help of his parents and has trouble socially. Overall though he is able to hold a job at Kroger and make his own dinner. My other uncle was more of a level two which meant he needed constant supervision, had a lot of problems interacting socially, and had many repetitive ticks including asking the same questions over and over again like "When's your birthday?" Because I have grown up in an environment that is accepting and loving of people with special needs, I have involved myself in volunteer groups and my school's TASK programs to help kids like my uncles. Autism is a mental disorder that begins in childhood. It is commonly noticed in children around three years old that have difficulty developing socially. Sometimes they seem to be developing normally, but are very quiet and focus on random items for long periods of time. It is estimated that 1 in 110 kids will be affected by autism, but autism is a spectrum with different levels of disabilities. Below is a picture of a summarized spectrum. No one is sure what one reason may cause autism, but doctors believe that environment, brain structure, and genetics may play a role.  If you want to learn more about autism follow this link.

Week 6: Personality Tests

Jung Typology Test: When I took this test I got an ENTJ. I think this test may b somewhat valid if the person is able to honestly answer questions about themselves. I would not consider myself to be full extrovert, but on this test I got 44%. The other are probably pretty true as I would say I'm more intuitive, thinking, and judgmental. This link talks about the accuracy of the test. (it isn't accurate)

Personality Lab: On this test I got almost very in between on everything. I leaned more towards narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy. This means I tend to think highly of myself, be concerned about how people think of me, and impulsive/ not sensitive. The first two may be accurate, but I am a sensitive person so I think the psychopathy one may not have been quite on the mark.

Understanding Prejudice Gender: This test said I strongly associate males with career and females with family. I think this is not a very good test because I do not believe this and the test was set up weirdly. It asked me to quickly sort stuff and told me whether I was wrong or not. I think it would have been better to test this through a questionnaire.

Attraction Test: This test says that I prefer guys that look funny or trendy, but dislike buys that look intelligent. It may be true that I am interested in funny guys, but I'd like to thing I would like smart guys. Overall this test is pretty accurate because it showed me pictures of guys and my responses probably did lead to those results.

Perfectionism test: I scored very low on organization and it may be true. I wouldn't say I'm terribly disorganized, but my room  is never clean... This test was probably pretty accurate.

Week 5: Senses and Stuff

Smell

This week I discovered a cool article about people who can't feel pain. These scientists discovered those with a rare genetic condition prohibiting them to feel pain also lack the ability to smell. They believe it is because we use the same signaling channel in our brain to feel pain and sense smells. This channel is active in the olfactory system, which is connected to smell. Now these researchers are worried that drugs diagnosed for pain that hit this channel could possibly wipe out the patient's sense of smell. I think it is really mind blowing that two seemingly unconnected things could be so interrelated in your body. Also, I will be asking lots of questions before ever receiving pain medication!

Week 4: My Life Story

 On September 15, 2001 at 10 am I was born. I lived in Austin for the first three years of my life and then I've lived in the Houston area ever since. At 10 months I was walking for the first time. At just over a year I spoke my first word, more, and by 2 I spoke in full sentences. When I was 4 years old my sister was born giving me an accomplice. I made my first real friend in 2nd grade and she has been my best friend even to this day.

Currently I hope to do well my SATs, so that I can get into Trinity University after I graduate in the spring of 2020. My plan is to major in business or economics and minor in English, so that I have a good chance of scoring high on my LSATs. Then I hope to go to UT Law School and become a criminal lawyer. I want to marry someone that's my best friend after I have an established career. I want one son named Preston, Travis, or Beau, but if I have girl first then I'll try again for a boy and I'd name the girl Josie. After I have my own law firm, I want to pursue a political career. I'll probably write books and start a podcast. If I love what I do, I'd never want to retire, but if I hate it I'd probably retire by 65. In my old age I want to buy a small house out in the country to have a fun place for my grand kids to visit me at. I hope I won't die until I'm a 100 but when I put in how I expected my life to be this life expectancy calculator told me only 94.

Week 3: BioHeroes

My birthday is September 15, so I have the temporal lobe and norepinephrine.

Origin Story: At age 17, Willadeen Bell with her big glasses and full luggage sat waiting to board the plane. She had just finished the summer before her senior year when her dad took a new job in China. She didn't know the language and now had to integrate at a new school. When her flight was called, Willa slowly got up and dragged her feet to the entrance. As she boarded the plane she rolled her eyes and crossed her arms every time her dad made encouraging comments about their new, exciting life in China. The plane soon took off and Willa closed her eyes for the long trip ahead. Not an hour away from her destination Willa was awoken by screams and thunder. There was a huge storm and the plane had already been hit by two massive lightning strikes. The plane started to descend at a rapid rate toward an empty field. As the plane fell, Willa's window was hit and smashes by a lightning strike that went right into Willa's head making her black out. When she woke up, she was in a hospital in China. Willa sat up and felt her head realizing she didn't have her glasses on anymore. As she looked around, she realized she could see perfectly even without her glasses. A young Chinese nurse walked over to Willa and started speaking. Even though Willa knew that it was in Chinese, she could understand her perfectly.

When the lightning struck Willa, it hit her temporal lobe which controls language, visual perception, and the ability to communicate. Her language abilities were enhance allowing her to understand and speak every language and even to animals making her the Super-Speaker. Her hormone norepinephrine was also affected increasing her ability to concentrate and have a speedy reaction time. Soon after she discovered her abilities, she learned of three other individuals who temporal lobes were enhanced by accidents in different ways. They formed The Temporal Team: Hearing-Helper, Opioid, Static Sensation.