Awe Walk

I decided to do the Awe Walk exercise because I felt it would be a good way to relax with finals coming up and dealing with other activities such as work and extracurricular activities. I first began by going to Fort Phantom lake. I come from a small town and so I grew up around land and would always go to the lake or nearby pond to relax and to clear my mind. So I went out there after classes on Wednesday around 4 o'clock. I spent around an hour out there walking around the bank and listening to the birds chirp and see the fish jump out of the water a few times. I just remember thinking how I wished I had my tackle box and fishing pole. It was a good feeling getting to go back into the country area and immerse myself into a home feeling and get out of town and away from all the horns and sirens. I eventually found a secluded area on the back side of the bank and away from the nearby road so I really felt alone and at peace. It allowed me to forget about all my worries and realize that no matter what there is always time to relax and get away. I was very glad that I took the time and get away because afterwards I couldn't help but smile and remember why I am where I am.

The high place I decided to go to was very limited to where I had access to. So although it may not be the most creative spot I decided to leave the lake and go over to the balcony area of moody and look out towards the clock tower. Around this time is was about 5:30-6:00. Around this time it was about time for the sun to set and it was very beautiful to look out towards that side of campus and see the purple and orange tint of the sky as the sun ever so slowly fell peacefully beyond the horizon. It made me want to pick up my bible and just read about the grace of our lord and savior and how our earth is a beautiful peace of art that he has painted so beautifully on a canvas that we call life. Although it was more urban than what I would usually consider my safe place or ideal place of relaxation, it was way more relaxing than I ever imagined before and I'm glad that I gave it a chance.

More than anything, I think the most amazing and my favorite part of the entire experience was leaving my phone in my truck and not carrying it with me. It is something that always keeps me attached to the world and especially for this experiment, it allowed me to fell even more about peace and remembering that it is always important to leave time to focus and worry about myself. It definitely allowed me to immerse myself more into the psychological benefits of secluding myself and finding that I don't need my phone or other people to be happy.

To conclude, I am very glad I participated in this trial and I can really see the benefits of continuing this exercise in my future. I would encourage anyone who reads this or is struggling with the stresses of life to practice this as well and to feel the peace that surrounds us but we overlook sometimes. I can say that I will continue to do this and am happy to say that I feel it will help me immensely.

#CounselorsHelp

To reflect on my recent tweet, I was stressed my junior year to the max. It was my first year to take dual credit courses on top of all the athletic teams I was apart of which lead to an extremely busy schedule. Mrs. Mallory was there with me every step of the way from planning courses to just being there when I needed someone to vent to about my anxiety. I never thought I could find someone outside my parents that would be so involved and caring about what I would do until I met this amazing woman and I am so glad that I had the chance to meet her. She always had her door open for me to answer any of my ridiculous questions that I had and would listen to me and help me cope with life an its many challenges. Being a first generation college student intimidated me and she was always supportive of me and helped me plan my future as well as encourage me to pursue my dream. This is a special woman to me and I can't thank her enough for what she did for me.

The link to my tweet is:
https://twitter.com/TTYYLLEERR1999

#PsychStory

The world is a vast land of creativity and intelligence that hides within the minds of different individuals among it. The diversity that engulfs this world ranges in more ways than anyone could ever imagine. Within this diversity lies beauty. A beauty that is indescribable by words but strong enough to be felt across all nations. It is our duty as people to harness this strength in order to overcome any challenge that arises within society and to strive for the betterment of each other in any category. 

There are a number of stories throughout history where multiculturalism has been the solution to what was seen as a threat to society. For instance, gender has played a huge role in societal rankings. In a traditional point of view, women were viewed as a lower class than men and did not have all the rights that men had and in some countries are still viewed as lesser today. One of the great movements to equalize this in America would be in the early 1900's when women protested for the right to vote. One of the most well leaders of this movement would be Susan B. Anthony.

Growing up in a politically active household, Susan B. Anthony always believed in her own truths and working towards what was right. She first began with the abolishment movement in hopes of working towards making slavery illegal. Once accomplishing that, she worked with fellow woman's suffrage leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The two worked together to form the National Women's Suffrage Association as well as producing The Revolution, a weekly publication that lobbied for women's suffrage. She tirelessly gave speeches and was even tried when she voted illegally for president in 1872. Although she died in 1906, 14 years before the 19th amendment was ratified that legalized the right for adult women to vote, she influenced and changed society to look past the idea of women as a gender and as an intellect instead.

Still to this day, diversity is a blind label being used in a negative format and used to channel anger and hatred for different types of people. The only way to break down this wall of hatred is to understand the importance of diversity and strength that lies within it. As Gandhi once said, "Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization." Progression towards a better life of all lies within the diverse people coming together with a common goal to better human life. It is up to us to stand firm and with open arms to the diverse people of this world to accomplish future success across all nations.

For a video speaking about the power of diversity click on the link below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJVtqKCfXUA

Sources:

https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/susan-b-anthony

https://www.google.com/search?biw=1242&bih=602&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=sgPDWr70ItLbzwLciJfgCQ&q=diversity+quotes&oq=diversity+qu&gs_l=psy-ab.1.0.0l10.16860.21029.0.22534.12.10.0.2.2.0.163.808.8j1.9.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..1.11.821...0i67k1.0.iVawhrumyZQ

Memory Reflection

Introduction

The function of memory has fascinated psychologist throughout history when studying the brain. Psychologist have studied how we perceive information and translate that into our memory in order to understand how to counteract some diagnosis that effect memory such as Alzheimer. During this blog, I will be talking about memory related disorders, forgetting, and ways to improve memory.

Memory Related Disorders

A memory related disorder refers to the deterioration of the brain and loss of brain cells that causes difficulty in remembering information. The main disease that is related to this is known as Alzheimer Disease. This disease causes neurons to stop functioning and lose connection to other neurons connected to parts of the brain that is responsible for memory such as the hippocampus. This causes memory loss since the neurons that are connected to the hippocampus give the information taken in from the surroundings are unable to transfer the information, the hippocampus is unable to store the memory which causes the forgetfulness According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, over 5.5 million people have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease across the United States as of 2016.

Ways to Improve Memory

They are two main strategies to improve memory. One strategy is the block method which mainly refers to remembering long list of numbers. For instance, memorize this list of numbers: 1,7,7,6,1,8,1,2,1,8,6,2,1,9,1,4,1,9,4,2. It is a struggle to remember 20 numbers by themselves isn't it? So to use the block method, memorize the numbers in blocks as listed: 1776,1812,1862,1914,1942. It makes it easier to remember 5 dates rather than 20 unrelated and individual numbers. The next strategy is the peg word mnemonic. This strategy takes the ability to memorize a sequence or information by relating the information to something to any outside object or something similar. This allows for one to think of a memory by also thinking of something else that relates to the memory you are originally trying to think of.

Conclusion

Study and research is still being done in order to strengthen our understanding of something so easy to know but yet so difficult to explain. This research has helped me to understand what research is being done to test where memory is stored within the brain and the entire process of how the brain takes the information give to us about our surroundings and store them in our brain as a memory in a self constructed library of memories.

Sources:
https://www.dshs.texas.gov/alzheimers/qanda.shtm
http://www.learner.org/series/discoveringpsychology/09/e09expand.html

Module 3: Experimental Task

Module 3: Experimental Task

After working on this project and reflecting on my journey, I am encouraged and proud of who I am today. I believe that I have been blessed with a great foundation of life and was raised in a environment that has prepared me for success. I am excited to see what my future holds and has in store for me.

Nature-Nurture Debate

Introduction

The development of a child begins with learned attributes, such as language, expressions, etc., and biological attributes such as height, skin color, and hair color. The debate begins with the idea that if you were to take the offspring from a family and place that offspring into a family with very different lifestyle or attributes from the original family, which features would the offspring develop while growing up. It asks the question, does a child develop psychological attributes from their genetics or how they were raised. This debate has gone on since 350 A.D. and has never been settled due to the facts that support both sides of the argument.

Nurture

The idea behind the nurture side of the debate is that children develop psychologically by the parent with which the offspring is nurtured by. For instance, there is a story of a boy in Uganda that was raised by monkey's from ages 3-6. He was cared for and nurtured by the monkeys in the near by jungle. He was found by a tribeswoman while he was scavenging in the trash with other monkeys, looking for food. He was accustomed to walking on his knee's, eating raw meat, and communicate with the monkeys. John's story explains how psychologically, it is possible to learn different than normal human characteristics in the ways of life. Furthermore, animals adopted offspring from other species all the time. The stories range from a peacock a goose to a chicken raising puppies.

Nature

Now the nature side of the debate believes that children develop psychologically from their genetics and biological attributes. Simply put, we develop based on the genes we inherit and the early these actions show, the more connected to genetics it is. For instance, the connection between a newborn and its mother is connected to evolution and that we are biological inclined to make that connection with our mother. This is also the idea behind how intelligence is passed down from generation to generation due to natural superiority.

Conclusion

I am no expert on the situation but I feel confident saying that it is easy to say both nature and nurture play a role in psychological development. However, they play crucial roles in different aspects of psychological development. I believe that the nature side develops more of the intelligence at an early stage and how we grow physically plays a role in our psychological development, while the nurture side assists in temperament and behavior. Although both sides have strong supporting facts, I think it has to be to the extreme of one side taking all the credit, both work together in harmony.

Works Cited

Ferguson, Euan. “He Was a Wild Child. Really Wild.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 9                    

                Oct. 1999, www.theguardian.com/world/1999/oct/10/euanferguson.theobserver.

McLeod, Saul. “Saul McLeod.” Nature Nurture in Psychology, Creative Commons , 1 Jan. 1970,                       

                www.simplypsychology.org/naturevsnurture.html.

PaytonJaneSesh. “Nature vs. Nurture: The Debate on Psychological Development.” YouTube,                 

               YouTube, 11 June 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPZsrLAkpKM.

Sensation & Perception

Introduction

Sensation and perception are two key components to how we all use our senses to relay to our brain about our surroundings. It allows for us to be aware of the objects and hazards that make up our environment which ultimately allows for the need to trigger survival instincts if necessary. Two of the most important senses that give us the greatest amount of information is our ability to hear sounds and to see our surroundings. However, these two senses are not a full proof function of relaying this message. This blog will explain how the senses hearing and seeing can be used to trick our brain into falling for tricks or illusions that seem to fool us.

Sight

I want to start of by showing you something fairly simple. Take a look at the picture above. Do you see black dots popping up within the white circles? Does it disappear whenever you look directly at it? This is because the black dots are not actually there, rather they are just simply your brain believing that it is therefore it allows you to see it. This is due to something called lateral inhibition. To simplify, lateral inhibition is what happens when more sides of a lighter area is darker, therefore you're brain perceives that the area is actually darker than what it truly is.

Hearing

Our eyes are not the only things that play tricks on us. Our ears can also fool us too. Auditory illusions exist to us in a form that our brain gets fooled yet again. For instance, whenever we hear a distorted message, we are unable to make up the message being revealed to us. However, once we learn what the message is relaying, suddenly it is a lot clearer to hear and understand than it was the first time it was played through. This is because you were able to comprehend what was going to be said and therefore were able to hear the message clearly. Feel free to try it out yourself by clicking on this link! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG9HSvNPVKQ


Conclusion

To conclude, our senses allow us to be able to survive in such an ever changing world that we are surrounded by but they also can be the key to how were are fooled in certain situations as well. Our brain can only use the information that it has being given and our brain is not always right in deciphering this information. This is why were our so easily fooled by certain illusions that leave us wondering how it is all possible to make something so simple that we still are unable to comprehend.

Sources

• http://psylux.psych.tu-dresden.de/i1/kaw/diverses%20Material/www.illusionworks.com/html/hermann_grid.html
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbzL9PxtFf0

Brain & Behavior - Concussions

What is a concussion?

Concussions, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is a jarring injury of the brain resulting in disturbance of cerebral function. According to Clifford Robbin, athletes in the United States suffer between 2.5-4 million concussions per year and between 50%-80% go untreated. Scientist today question how these concussions effect the brain after the injury has occurred and what happens to the brain itself to cause this injury.

How do you get a concussion and what are the symptoms?

A concussion is caused by jarring of the brain against the skull from either a single hit to the head or several smaller hits consistently. This jarring causes the neurons in the brain to stretch and tear the axons within itself, causing the neurons to not be able to transmit signals back and forth. Once these axons begin to deteriorate, they release toxins which in turn kills of other nearby neurons as well. Symptoms of a concussion include unconsciousness, headaches, blurry vision, balance issues, behavioral issues, memory problems, and sleep prevention. Concussions can be hard to diagnosed because the symptoms arrive slowly after the concussion has already arrived.

How do concussions effect the brain overtime?

It often takes between a few days to a couple of weeks for a concussion to fully heal. A person should rest and take caution to any activity to allow the brain to regenerate and heal completely. However, a concussion can lead to a number of later medical issues. One of which is PCS or Post-Concussion Syndrome. This can lead to constant headaches, memory problems, and behavioral issues that could effect the person for months or even years after the injury. An overload of sub-concussive hits can lead to CTE, or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. CTE is a brain deteriorating disease that can effect a persons mood and behavior that begin in the person's 30s or 40s followed by memory problems and issues thinking which in some cases lead to dementia. 

About My Interest in Psychology

Psychology is an interesting field of study that looks into the deeper aspect of the development of life intellectually and emotionally. The field of psychology is broken up into several different and more specific fields. The field of psychology that most interests me is sports psychology!

Sports psychology is the study of how psychology influences sports, athletic performance, exercise, and physical activity. For instance, in baseball, a batter has a different approach when stepping into the batter's box that is influenced by the count of the at-bat. The batter will not step in thinking the same way on a 3-0 count as he would on a 0-2 count. Sports psychology looks at this aspect and studies how the mentality changes throughout these scenarios.

The education that goes into sports psychology is fairly simple. First is to attain a bachelor's degree in psychology which will take 4 years or 8 semesters. Few sports psychologist are able to start their career with only a bachelor's degree so next you will need to attain a Master's in psychology which is an additional 2 years or 4 semesters. Finally, if you wish to further your education, you will need to attain a Doctorate in psychology which is an additional 2 years or 4 semesters. After this you are able begin your career as a sports psychologist.

Jobs in this field of psychology do not range too far away from the main title itself. Sports psychologist is the one job that comes with this degree. Working as a sports psychologist includes either research or counseling. The research side focuses on observing athletes to find out what motivates them to push on and what makes the athlete have such a strong desire to be apart of the "winners circle". However, the counseling side leans more on the side of working with athletes to find out why they are not performing their best, whether it is because of outside influences or personal problems such as confidence issues.

Not very many people know a sports psychologist, but they do play a key role in how professional or college teams perform. For instance, the TCU baseball team has a famous sports psychologist by the name of Brian Cain. He works with the athletes mentally and helps to bring them focused into the scenario in which they are apart of. Another sports psychologist is Dr. Michael Gervais. Dr. Gervais is the sports psychologist for the well known Seattle Seahawks and also works with Olympic athletes. He is the host of the podcast "Finding Mastery" which speaks about how to train your mind to operate at peak performance.

This field interests me because I am a big sports fan and I like to gain knowledge about each sport. Specifically, I like to know how to approach each task in the sport. For example, in football putting together a drive is knowing how to complete a task given several situations. You need to know the difference between play calling on 2nd Down and 3rd Down. In the past, I have had my own experience with sports psychology. My high school baseball team used to participate in Brian Cain's Peak Performance exercises and it helped me to focus on the game and to concentrate on the task at hand rather than be distracted by outside problems. I feel I would be good in this field because I have the basic knowledge of several sports and gaining even a deeper knowledge of each sport and the mentality that comes with it is something that intrigues me.

Sources:
https://www.verywell.com/major-branches-of-psychology-4139786
https://careersinpsychology.org/becoming-a-sports-psychologist/
https://findingmastery.net/about-michael-gervais/

About Me

My name is Tyler Burchette. I am from Millsap, Texas which is a small town about 15 minutes west of Weatherford. I graduated with a class of 60 students and played several sports in high school. I was apart of the cross country, football, basketball, tennis, and baseball team. 

I am currently apart of a few clubs on campus as well. I am a member of the BSM, I will be pledging for Theta Alpha Zeta this semester, I am apart of the club table tennis team, and I will be playing intramural basketball. I am a Biology major but plan to attend Physical Therapy school so I am on a Pre-PT program. 

I chose to major in Biology because I enjoy science and because I feel it is the best major to fall back on in the worst case scenario. I chose to pursue physical therapy because my father is a paraplegic and has been since I was 2-years-old and I was around it so often, and enjoyed it as well.

My dad became a paraplegic after a car accident that he was apart of after hitting black ice on a bridge while headed to work. He is one of my biggest supporters and role models. I believe that physical therapy was put into my life for a purpose and I hope to help other people in need in the future.