Art & Psychology

Adolescent Development, my first psych class.  This class showed me the possibilities of integrating art with psychology.  I became interested exploring the power arts had on ourselves and the people around us through a scientific, cognitive, and developmental lens.

October 2013

In the beginning, I found myself taking a long time to read the articles but I am slowly getting better at adjusting my time based on the workload. I have gained some interesting insight on adolescent development, enjoyed the presentation my group did but am trying to get used to a more discussion-based class as I find myself more inclined to listen and take notes as opposed to speaking up but I do follow and enjoy the discussions nonetheless. I also find that the lack of exams actually puts off the pressure of trying to remember all the facts and shifts my focus on understanding the material I read.

December 2013

Prior to college, I did have a growing interest in psychology; I was particularly interested in how the mind and brain worked and how society or the environment affected biological underpinnings, especially during the period of childhood and adolescents.  In some ways, a lot of things I learnt in this class have been new material (I did not get the chance to study Psychology before this but had been increasingly fascinated by it) but at the same time, it wasn’t too hard to understand because I felt this field, especially that of adolescent development, was relatable to our life experiences.

Overall, this class required the most research and did challenge me a bit more than I was used to in writing papers. While I enjoyed writing before, I think the amount of writing I did this semester has helped me get more acquainted to Hampshire and college life. I would like to think that I have improved in practising to structure my essays as well as analysing and bringing different information sources together.

There was an apparent  transition from not only high school to college, but, for me, an entirely different education system.  I was engaged in listening to the conversations but I wasn’t as used to speaking too much because I liked processing the information and developing my opinions in my head first. Essentially, I learnt that I still gained much insight without talking too much in class because that is not naturally how I learn or thrive best, but I think engaging in active discussion when you have something substantial to say is a good way to think critically, challenge myself, and discover different perspectives other than my own.

I think I came into the class without much expectations, equipped with just my curiosity and fascination in psychology, hoping to figure what it is in psychology that I was drawn to.  Coming out from this class, I feel that it really has introduced me to the world of psychology, a much bigger and more interconnected one than I thought it was.  I liked dipping my feet in the different facets of adolescent development from moral and cognitive development to ethnic identity and finally stringing art with adolescent identity, psychopathology, and the brain in my final paper.