I took this online class over the summer though Bellevue College after my freshman year, in order to fulfill a psychology requirement so I could apply to the major sooner. I consider this class a big turning point in my journey of finding my major and understanding why I choose it.
A big issue I had been facing for a little more than a year was my choice of a major. I grew up as "the smart kid" in my family, and so everyone expected me to major in a science like Biology and become a rich doctor. One problem: just because I was good at science, didn't mean I liked it. I hated physics and chemistry with a passion, which are required courses for med school. Psychology appealed to me because I've always been interested in counseling, and it seemed like the route to take to help people suffering from mental illness while also using my scientific strengths.
While no one in my family said it out loud, I could feel a sense of disappointment that I had not met their expectations, and landed myself in this "fake science". After a while, the weight of everyone's expectations weighed down on me, and I doubted myself and my major.
This class completely changed my mind. I learned so much about what makes a science a science, and how psychology falls in to this category when it is done correctly. Psychology has a bad rep as a soft/social/pseudo science, and this class helped me understand why: not only is Psychology a newer field of science, but people have used its name for the wrong reasons, like fortune telling. The coursework in this class helped me to reconcile the struggle I was having about Psychology not being good enough, and gave me an improved confidence in my ability to use Psychology as a scientific tool.
I wrote this APA paper as part of my class final, and I used the paper to explore my interest in psychotherapy for teens suffering from depression. Because this topic is so personal to me, the research I did on the topic was so much more interesting than in prior research projects where I've been assigned a topic. I feel this paper represents my first step in to using Psychology as a science to study abnormal behavior, and hopefully to discover how to best treat these abnormalities. I'm really proud of the work I did, and how the paper simply looks professional and well-researched.