Hi all!

My name is Katherine Shute, but please feel free to call me Katie or Kate, whichever you like best. I’m a second semester freshman here at AC, and I currently intend to major in East Asian Studies (thus my title being in Japanese; I also just wanted it to stand out a little), but that may change later. I’m from San Antonio, TX, and am honestly finding Sherman to be extremely small and boring (no offense to those who love Sherman).

I chose to take this class for several reasons. My high school offered AP Psych, and I always wanted to take it, but never had time. I’ve also always been interested in understanding why brains work the way they do, and why people behave in certain ways. The last reason is that I thought I had a full course load for this semester, but one of my classes only counts for half a credit, so I needed to add another class to keep financial aid and figured, hey, why not psychology? (Thanks Dr. MacFarlane!)

I associate the word “psychology” with a lot of things. Couches, waiting rooms, medication, frustration, and hatred of Freud are the first things that come to mind, but also vague images from stock photos of brains and neurons. I also get images of people recovering from various things, the causes behind effects, and understanding (of what? Not sure.).

The most interesting parts of the syllabus, to me, were classical conditioning (always found it fascinating), theories of intelligence (I know there’s more than one way to be smart, I just need more information), and mood disorders and anxiety (I have an anxiety disorder, and understanding my own brain seems to be rather useful). The ones that didn’t really jump out to me were concussions, drugs and alcohol, and neurons, as I already know some stuff about neurons and just plain am not interested in the other two.

One question I would like to have answered by the end of this semester is: Will I be able to get myself together enough to get a decent grade?