I really need to stop making blogs and then stop writing in them! Lol! A lot has changed since my last post!
Yet again I changed my dissertation idea and finally settled on looking into self-harm and the older generation. I'm glad I did because when I got the feedback from my research proposal I came out with 2:1 so was super happy about that!
Second year kind of flew over in a rather hectic way, and I can't actually remember doing it at all if that makes sense. It has definitely been the hardest year as the workload felt like it was never ending! The exams were so stressful and even resulted in me being at uni to revise on a weekend! Thankfully though, all the hard work and perseverance of this year paid off as I passed all my modules, much to my surprise! I can't express how happy I am knowing that I don't have to look at cognitive psychology again! (At least not that I know of! lol!).
I really need to work my ass off this year though as I only got a 2:2 overall for second year and I really want an overall degree mark of 2:1 so I have a lot of work to do to bring that grade up for this year! Hopefully I'll actually stick with my plans of doing assignments when I get them and not leaving them until the last minute like I did for 1st and 2nd year! I really hope I've learned my lesson! lol!
So, I go back to uni in just under 4 weeks and I am pretty terrified, not really sure what to expect and I feel like I have forgotten everything I've learned the last 2 years! Pretty sure it'll probably come back to me...I hope! My timetable is looking pretty good though, providing lectures don't get changed and I manage to secure the seminar times I want it'll mean I get two full days off a week, and I'll have a seminar on every day that I have a lecture, which should help me keep my attendance up!
Can't really think of anything else to ramble about so gonna leave it at that!
Sunday, 9 September 2012
Wednesday, 1 February 2012
Change of mind, again!
I figured I'd best update this as I've changed my idea for my dissertation yet again! However, I am 100% sure that this idea will actually stick! Having spoke to Paul and also my dissertation supervisor I have decided to look into the understanding of self-harm (including definitions of self-harm) of those who are not self-harmers.
The main reason for changing my idea was mainly ethics, as I learned it would be very difficult to pass the ethics committee if I was to actually work with self-harmers directly, due the risks that could occur by feelings triggered during the research. The good thing is that I don't have to abandon the idea completely, I am hoping that in a few years time the original topic will be something I can come back to once I have a bit more experience of psychological research.
On top of my dissertation project, there's also a very interesting project happening for my ECA in my positive psychology module. It's basically a report of a positive change that we are going to make about ourselves, I'm super excited to carry out (yes I know, I'm nerdy :P). This week the task has been to observe our behaviour to help us choose what we want to change and it's been a very insightful week so far! There's also public and private blog on our blackboard page which I'm also excited about because I loooooove writing! Lmao! Just hope I don't post too much, or end up posting things that are a bit too personal! Must remember that it's mainly to track progress of how the change is going, and not a counselling site! lol!
Oooh! That's not the only exciting thing that's been happening! We're making a psychology society at the university! I am REALLY excited for that, it's amazed me that one of these hasn't already existed as it's going to be a great way to share ideas, debate topics within psychology and other cool stuff :). One of the things I'm hoping to get out of it is that I might finally find a subject that I am 100% passionate about, at the moment I'm flitting between everything and don't really have an area of psychology that I'm interested in, as I like all of it. Not that that's a bad thing, I just think it would be easier for me in the future to know what areas I'd like to work in (apart from clinical psych) so that I can make choices that suit that, but we'll see :).
One sucky thing has happened, and that is that the module choices this year are a bit pants. More so because the only module that holds any interest to me is the learning disabilities and we have to pick two from the choices, so I'm going to speak to someone this week hopefully, to see if I can get some advice!
Also, maybe I should rename this "University, eek!" as I seem to talk about more than just my dissertation!
The main reason for changing my idea was mainly ethics, as I learned it would be very difficult to pass the ethics committee if I was to actually work with self-harmers directly, due the risks that could occur by feelings triggered during the research. The good thing is that I don't have to abandon the idea completely, I am hoping that in a few years time the original topic will be something I can come back to once I have a bit more experience of psychological research.
On top of my dissertation project, there's also a very interesting project happening for my ECA in my positive psychology module. It's basically a report of a positive change that we are going to make about ourselves, I'm super excited to carry out (yes I know, I'm nerdy :P). This week the task has been to observe our behaviour to help us choose what we want to change and it's been a very insightful week so far! There's also public and private blog on our blackboard page which I'm also excited about because I loooooove writing! Lmao! Just hope I don't post too much, or end up posting things that are a bit too personal! Must remember that it's mainly to track progress of how the change is going, and not a counselling site! lol!
Oooh! That's not the only exciting thing that's been happening! We're making a psychology society at the university! I am REALLY excited for that, it's amazed me that one of these hasn't already existed as it's going to be a great way to share ideas, debate topics within psychology and other cool stuff :). One of the things I'm hoping to get out of it is that I might finally find a subject that I am 100% passionate about, at the moment I'm flitting between everything and don't really have an area of psychology that I'm interested in, as I like all of it. Not that that's a bad thing, I just think it would be easier for me in the future to know what areas I'd like to work in (apart from clinical psych) so that I can make choices that suit that, but we'll see :).
One sucky thing has happened, and that is that the module choices this year are a bit pants. More so because the only module that holds any interest to me is the learning disabilities and we have to pick two from the choices, so I'm going to speak to someone this week hopefully, to see if I can get some advice!
Also, maybe I should rename this "University, eek!" as I seem to talk about more than just my dissertation!
Friday, 16 December 2011
Meeting with supervisor!
So I met with my dissertation supervisor yesterday :).
It was good, we spoke about my idea (self harm in adolescent males) and she said she liked the idea of focusing on males but wasn't sure about adolescents as that's what the focus is always on. Which is a good point really! She then suggested to me about looking at self harm in middled aged men, especially in regards to treatment as she knows that they don't really get taken seriously and things, which is a genius idea! I am very much excited about it, it's amazing at how obvious it seems now, wish I had thought of it first! lol! So yeah, my job to do before we meet again in Feb is to look at the psychology behind self-harm etc. and just try and find a good starting point for the research proposal :D.
I am excited!
It was good, we spoke about my idea (self harm in adolescent males) and she said she liked the idea of focusing on males but wasn't sure about adolescents as that's what the focus is always on. Which is a good point really! She then suggested to me about looking at self harm in middled aged men, especially in regards to treatment as she knows that they don't really get taken seriously and things, which is a genius idea! I am very much excited about it, it's amazing at how obvious it seems now, wish I had thought of it first! lol! So yeah, my job to do before we meet again in Feb is to look at the psychology behind self-harm etc. and just try and find a good starting point for the research proposal :D.
I am excited!
Thursday, 8 December 2011
Success!
This will just be a quick update as there isn't much progress on the dissertation front.
Big news though! I GOT THE SUPERVISOR THAT I WANTED! :D. So as you can guess I am completely over the moon as it means I can do the research topics that I want! Only thing now is I have to decide between doing Self-Harm in adolescent males, and parent views on mental illness in children.
We have to book an appointment with our supervisors for next week, so I must make sure that I do that tomorrow! I'm feeling rather nervous, mostly because when it comes to the appointment I have no idea where I'm supposed to go, but also in case she thinks my ideas are silly. I'm sure it'll all be fine though!
Oh, and I know it's not dissertation related but I'm almost done with my Applied Experimental presentation. Just a few bits missing as I couldn't remember what needed to be in it as I was too ill to concentrate in the last seminar!
I think this is all for now and no doubt I shall be updating again next week after my meeting with my supervisor!
Big news though! I GOT THE SUPERVISOR THAT I WANTED! :D. So as you can guess I am completely over the moon as it means I can do the research topics that I want! Only thing now is I have to decide between doing Self-Harm in adolescent males, and parent views on mental illness in children.
We have to book an appointment with our supervisors for next week, so I must make sure that I do that tomorrow! I'm feeling rather nervous, mostly because when it comes to the appointment I have no idea where I'm supposed to go, but also in case she thinks my ideas are silly. I'm sure it'll all be fine though!
Oh, and I know it's not dissertation related but I'm almost done with my Applied Experimental presentation. Just a few bits missing as I couldn't remember what needed to be in it as I was too ill to concentrate in the last seminar!
I think this is all for now and no doubt I shall be updating again next week after my meeting with my supervisor!
Monday, 28 November 2011
Supervisor chosen and finally, my idea!
Okay, so today we had to write down three ideas or topics that we were interested in and then two supervisors that we'd like to work with. I felt good that I had two solid ideas for my dissertation, both of them in some form of research question too, but I was anxious about the fact I had no clue what other areas of psychology I was interested in. I spent the time in the lecture trying to think of something I wanted (in case my first two options couldn't happen) but my mind was blank, I guess that's what I get for staying up most of the night!
Anyway, I finally managed to settle on one very brief idea just for the mere fact I needed to write something down. So, here goes in order of preference, my ideas for my dissertation;
Okay, so the first topic is one I really want to do. Mainly because from things I've read, and from my own experience as a self-harmer and the people I have come across, it is clear to me that self-harm is very rarely reported in male adolescents. I want to find out why this is, whether it be due to a certain "macho man" stereotype or whether it actually is just less frequent in males than females. I haven't got much more information on this yet, but I'm hoping when I meet with my supervisor (bearing in mind that I do get the lecturer I need to do this research) that they'll be able to guide me to the right places.
My second topic is one that I came to with the help of my friend (his blog: deanmnicholls.wordpress.com). As I mentioned in my previous post I was interested in adult views of mental illness in children (things such as does it exist?) but couldn't think of how to reason doing that as a research project. However, thanks to Dean he made me think about looking at the views in terms of the implications it could have on the treatment of mental illness in children, brilliant! I had originally started with this being a quantitative report (basically, a questionnaire designed built of mainly yes/no answers) but I'm not sure if it would work, or if I would be better approaching it at a qualitative angle. I'm hoping that I can do it quants, as that would mean I could use it for applied experimental and still get to do both ideas :) (even though i wouldn't be carrying out the applied experimental research).
Thirdly, this really is my last last last resort. I AM interested in de-individuation, especially after watching the Derren Brown experiment on the subject. I would love to do a similar study (although I imagine getting passed ethics would be VERY difficult!) so it wouldn't completely suck, but fingers crossed I can get either of my first two choices!
It all really depends on the supervisor I am allocated and I have to wait until Wednesday at the earliest before I'll find out! It also kind of freaked me out to see that the guy in front of me today, had wrote down the exact same lecturers as me, in the same order! So I am slightly worried! Fingers crossed it'll work out, and both lecturers I've chosen are awesome so I will be happy no matter what :).
Anyway, I finally managed to settle on one very brief idea just for the mere fact I needed to write something down. So, here goes in order of preference, my ideas for my dissertation;
- Self-Harm in adolescent males
- Adult/Parent views on mental illness in children and the implications this could have on the successful treatment of mental illness in children.
- De-individuation
Okay, so the first topic is one I really want to do. Mainly because from things I've read, and from my own experience as a self-harmer and the people I have come across, it is clear to me that self-harm is very rarely reported in male adolescents. I want to find out why this is, whether it be due to a certain "macho man" stereotype or whether it actually is just less frequent in males than females. I haven't got much more information on this yet, but I'm hoping when I meet with my supervisor (bearing in mind that I do get the lecturer I need to do this research) that they'll be able to guide me to the right places.
My second topic is one that I came to with the help of my friend (his blog: deanmnicholls.wordpress.com). As I mentioned in my previous post I was interested in adult views of mental illness in children (things such as does it exist?) but couldn't think of how to reason doing that as a research project. However, thanks to Dean he made me think about looking at the views in terms of the implications it could have on the treatment of mental illness in children, brilliant! I had originally started with this being a quantitative report (basically, a questionnaire designed built of mainly yes/no answers) but I'm not sure if it would work, or if I would be better approaching it at a qualitative angle. I'm hoping that I can do it quants, as that would mean I could use it for applied experimental and still get to do both ideas :) (even though i wouldn't be carrying out the applied experimental research).
Thirdly, this really is my last last last resort. I AM interested in de-individuation, especially after watching the Derren Brown experiment on the subject. I would love to do a similar study (although I imagine getting passed ethics would be VERY difficult!) so it wouldn't completely suck, but fingers crossed I can get either of my first two choices!
It all really depends on the supervisor I am allocated and I have to wait until Wednesday at the earliest before I'll find out! It also kind of freaked me out to see that the guy in front of me today, had wrote down the exact same lecturers as me, in the same order! So I am slightly worried! Fingers crossed it'll work out, and both lecturers I've chosen are awesome so I will be happy no matter what :).
Not so confident!
Hey again!
So I'd mentioned in my last post that I was going to talk about my dissertation/applied experimental idea but things have ballsed up slightly, so I'll not be doing that today. For some bizarre reason my brain did not click that applied experimental means that I will have to do a purely quantitative report and the idea I have for my dissertation is qualitative. Which sucks because I really wanted to do the same idea for both so that I could gain better insight into what I needed to do and to be honest, be able to make the mistakes now rather than in my actual dissertation. Anyway, I now need to think of a new idea for applied experimental.
I spoke to Alessandro (module leader for applied experimental) and he said he would quite happily give me an idea for work in the visual perception area, and I DO have an interest for that, but to be honest I want to something within the mental health field (or even something to do with autism/aspergers). One reason being that my main goal is to be a clinical psychologist, so I want to keep my work as clinical/mental health as possible, and I don't think I could work on something that I didn't have passion for. I know it's not actually carrying out the research in this module, that it's all just layout, method and idea...but I really don't think I could work if I was bored. I'm bad enough as it is for putting off work, I don't need the help of being bored doing it too lmao.
I had thought of looking at anorexia, in the sense of do anorexics regard thin people as being happy and having better quality of life than those who are overweight, but part of me thinks that common sense can tell us that yes, they probably do, and so the research would be pointless.
A second idea I'd had, and an idea that I originally came up with earlier in the year when I knew about the extra research module I would be doing, was looking at perceptions of mental health problems in children. So, I would basically be asking adults if they believed that mental health problems (such as depression, bipolar and even schizophrenia) are something that can happen to children, but I have no idea how to make it useful or to find reasons why this would be a beneficial study.
To be honest, I find quantitative methods very restrictive - Yes, it's easy (well, easier than qualitative research in terms of interpreting data) but it is limited in what you can do, at least especially in regards to mental health. I just feel completely baffled and I'm really regretting taking this module, I love research (hence why I took it) but I had forgot how suffocating experimental research makes me feel.
In other news, tomorrow we pick our supervisors! I am shit scared because there is one lecturer who I literally NEED to have has my supervisor so that I can do the research I wanna do and I am going to completely gutted if I don't get her. So, fingers crossed all works out well!
PS. If any one has any sort of advice/help/input/ideas that relate to my topics of interest that they could give me to help figure out a way to do a useful quantitative piece of research, then please get in touch!
So I'd mentioned in my last post that I was going to talk about my dissertation/applied experimental idea but things have ballsed up slightly, so I'll not be doing that today. For some bizarre reason my brain did not click that applied experimental means that I will have to do a purely quantitative report and the idea I have for my dissertation is qualitative. Which sucks because I really wanted to do the same idea for both so that I could gain better insight into what I needed to do and to be honest, be able to make the mistakes now rather than in my actual dissertation. Anyway, I now need to think of a new idea for applied experimental.
I spoke to Alessandro (module leader for applied experimental) and he said he would quite happily give me an idea for work in the visual perception area, and I DO have an interest for that, but to be honest I want to something within the mental health field (or even something to do with autism/aspergers). One reason being that my main goal is to be a clinical psychologist, so I want to keep my work as clinical/mental health as possible, and I don't think I could work on something that I didn't have passion for. I know it's not actually carrying out the research in this module, that it's all just layout, method and idea...but I really don't think I could work if I was bored. I'm bad enough as it is for putting off work, I don't need the help of being bored doing it too lmao.
I had thought of looking at anorexia, in the sense of do anorexics regard thin people as being happy and having better quality of life than those who are overweight, but part of me thinks that common sense can tell us that yes, they probably do, and so the research would be pointless.
A second idea I'd had, and an idea that I originally came up with earlier in the year when I knew about the extra research module I would be doing, was looking at perceptions of mental health problems in children. So, I would basically be asking adults if they believed that mental health problems (such as depression, bipolar and even schizophrenia) are something that can happen to children, but I have no idea how to make it useful or to find reasons why this would be a beneficial study.
To be honest, I find quantitative methods very restrictive - Yes, it's easy (well, easier than qualitative research in terms of interpreting data) but it is limited in what you can do, at least especially in regards to mental health. I just feel completely baffled and I'm really regretting taking this module, I love research (hence why I took it) but I had forgot how suffocating experimental research makes me feel.
In other news, tomorrow we pick our supervisors! I am shit scared because there is one lecturer who I literally NEED to have has my supervisor so that I can do the research I wanna do and I am going to completely gutted if I don't get her. So, fingers crossed all works out well!
PS. If any one has any sort of advice/help/input/ideas that relate to my topics of interest that they could give me to help figure out a way to do a useful quantitative piece of research, then please get in touch!
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Woohoo blog yay!
Okay, so I am terribly hopeless with blogs and I am constantly creating and then after a few months bailing on them, but hopefully that won't happen with this one!
I'm mainly using this to document my time whilst doing my dissertation, I think it'll be useful for me to vent out my thoughts on my ideas without driving the people around me mad! (I talk A LOT and can sometimes be a bit overwhelming).
So I'm only just in my second year of my BSc Psychology course at Teesside University but already we are starting planning for our dissertations, and it's next week in which we pick our supervisors! Pretty scary, especially since I have dabbled with ten thousand different ideas in about a month (and I'm not exaggerating...okay well maybe a little) and struggled to settle and feel comfortable with one idea. So I've been pretty stressed out, my ideas have been great, but the thing I've struggled with the most is simply justifying reasons for WHY I want to carry out such research, and because I haven't been able to do this, all of my ideas were put in the bin and I began to freak the hell out. Again.
Tonight was the most stressful, forgetting my dissertation for a second, I'm also studying a module this year called Applied Experimental Psychology, it's basically a whole module focused on research. Our assignment for the year is to come up with a research idea, and write a report on it, the only thing we don't do is actually DO the research. Anyway, I found out today that we really need to have some work to show our lecturer by Friday so that he can give us feedback. Not good news to find out when you have no work at all, so panic mode set in and I pretty much resigned myself to that fact that I am failing this module and there is nothing I can do about it. (I get this thought a lot, it nearly always passes).
I spoke to a friend, he sent me some research papers and within minutes I had my whole research idea and thus also my dissertation idea too. The joy with Applied Experimental is that we can use the research we do in that module for our dissertation, BONUS. So yeah, it literally took me five minutes to get the idea, and then only another twenty or so to write a brief introduction, method and some rough questions for my questionnaire. I guess I just work well under pressure, good job really as I have a habit of being totally useless cognitively until right close to deadlines.
I'd go into more about what my idea is, but I think I'll leave this for now because it's already super long and it's getting late and I should really sleep.
Bye for now!
I'm mainly using this to document my time whilst doing my dissertation, I think it'll be useful for me to vent out my thoughts on my ideas without driving the people around me mad! (I talk A LOT and can sometimes be a bit overwhelming).
So I'm only just in my second year of my BSc Psychology course at Teesside University but already we are starting planning for our dissertations, and it's next week in which we pick our supervisors! Pretty scary, especially since I have dabbled with ten thousand different ideas in about a month (and I'm not exaggerating...okay well maybe a little) and struggled to settle and feel comfortable with one idea. So I've been pretty stressed out, my ideas have been great, but the thing I've struggled with the most is simply justifying reasons for WHY I want to carry out such research, and because I haven't been able to do this, all of my ideas were put in the bin and I began to freak the hell out. Again.
Tonight was the most stressful, forgetting my dissertation for a second, I'm also studying a module this year called Applied Experimental Psychology, it's basically a whole module focused on research. Our assignment for the year is to come up with a research idea, and write a report on it, the only thing we don't do is actually DO the research. Anyway, I found out today that we really need to have some work to show our lecturer by Friday so that he can give us feedback. Not good news to find out when you have no work at all, so panic mode set in and I pretty much resigned myself to that fact that I am failing this module and there is nothing I can do about it. (I get this thought a lot, it nearly always passes).
I spoke to a friend, he sent me some research papers and within minutes I had my whole research idea and thus also my dissertation idea too. The joy with Applied Experimental is that we can use the research we do in that module for our dissertation, BONUS. So yeah, it literally took me five minutes to get the idea, and then only another twenty or so to write a brief introduction, method and some rough questions for my questionnaire. I guess I just work well under pressure, good job really as I have a habit of being totally useless cognitively until right close to deadlines.
I'd go into more about what my idea is, but I think I'll leave this for now because it's already super long and it's getting late and I should really sleep.
Bye for now!
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