Major Dilemma

In my last post I talk about Why I Decided to Go Back to School. In this here post, I'm going to talk about the problems I had when it comes to choosing a major and what I ended up settling on.


I transferred to so many schools during my college years that it became a problem. I was "required" to take this course, then this one, oh that one from that other school didn't count - you have to take our version.

When that happens, you end up with a lot of "elective" classes. These are classes that at one point in time were part of your major or were required for a specific school but actually end up being nothing more than electives at another. I have so many of these.


It got to the point where I went to see an advisor and I was like "Please dear glob, tell me what I can do to get out of here the quickest way possible." And the nice lady said "Psychology".


So that ladies and gentleman is how my major was chosen. I was at one point an English major with a minor in Psychology. But, since I had taken so many psychology courses already it was to my advantage to continue on that path.

Which, all things considered is pretty cool. I mean, I like learning about the mind and how people think. Psychology is fascinating because it seems that we are constantly learning new things about it. There are treatments available now that were not even conceived of a few years ago.

Plus there are so many elements to psychology that it never gets boring. There are any number of different ways you can learn to incorporate it into your life.

Right now I am taking two classes: Cognitive Psychology & Abnormal Psychology

Abnormal is definitely the more interesting one. It may seem kind of weird and morbid to focus on mental illnesses, especially those "weird" or "scary" ones that we see played out on TV & movies. But without proper diagnoses and treatments people who are normal but living with mental illnesses might still be chained to metal beds and getting electro-shock treatment for reasons that aren't even valid.


In my Cognitive Psyc class we're learning about how the brain makes decisions & the time it takes to make them. It's fascinating to learn that things you do every day become so ingrained in our minds that we don't have to think about doing them. Which seems like a very "duh, Val" thing to say but think of ALL the things you do on a daily basis that you're not constantly focusing on.

We just did a little makeshift experiment in class that had to do with this.

So anyway, that's what I'm learning right now. It's fun and I don't even mind reading the lengthy chapters but after being out of school for years it's taken me a while to get back into the swing of things.

That, however, is for the next post.

What was one of your favorite classes? What is something you still remember from a high school or college class? If you could teach a class, what subject would you teach?