Post 9: A Letter to Future Students

 What is your advice for students taking AP Psych in the future?

What was your favorite activity or project?
What do you think I should leave out next year?
Do you have any suggestions or ideas for things I could do next year in AP Psych?

Hello, future psych students. There are so many things I could say about this class, but let's start out with my personal recommendations for this class.

1. DO THE VOCAB. I think the hardest thing grade-wise in this class are the quizzes (and the infrequent tests), so having a double count can be devastating. Sometimes, it also counts as extra credit to help out with any low grades too, so it's generally always a win. It would be helpful, though, to ask if it it's extra credit or a real grade. I had enough points for my daily grade average, but I ended up doing the vocab anyway for extra credit instead of the grade I expected it to be. 

2. Don't cram everything into the last day. Spend an hour or two knocking out the bulk of stuff over the weekend instead of having everything overload you on the last day before the deadline. It gets to be overwhelming, especially when there is a ton of stuff on one day. 

3. Mind maps... weren't worth it in my opinion. I feel like if you take thorough notes and do the vocab, mind maps feel a little bit overkill. If that's how you learn, by all means, go for it! They didn't help me too much, though, and they were a massive timesuck, so choosing less intensive mastery tasks might be worth your while.

4. Study the review in Schoology for tests. All of the content will come from whatever review is posted, so committing it to memory is probably the best thing you could do to study for them. Sometimes they're a bit hard to find, so go digging because almost every test (not quiz), there's a hefty review for you to go through.

5. Do as much of your work as you can in class (as long as you're not taking notes - that will screw you up). You generally get a decent amount of relaxed time, which is realistically probably enough to knock out progress checks or FRQs. Make use of it!! Taking care of it during class is a LOT more efficient than just waiting until you get home. I am the biggest culprit of waiting to do it at home, and it usually never ends well. Doing it early usually means you'll know the content for the review game so you can get more extra credit.

6. Don't waste your time on the small things. Get them done fast, especially the one-off review worksheets and small activities. They don't contribute much, and when taken advantage of, Psych becomes a very chill course where you can get a good amount of work done. Knock out small things, and you'll have plenty of time to take care of stuff.

7. Solitary is a TRAP. You will be typing up your blogs and suddenly, boom, someone is having an aneurysm and you won't get back to typing for the next 30 minutes. Tune it out if you want to get your blogs done OR just do your blogs super fast. It's the perfect time to get work done as long as you can tune the show out. A test of mental strength, as some may say.

8. Get to know people in your class. It makes it so much better to have people who don't despise you when you do group games or reviews. Plus, it just makes the class a lot more enjoyable to be in. 

As for my advice for next year:

- My favorite project was probably this blog project. It's actually kind of nice to be able to talk about random things on a blog. It's not super educational, per se, but it's definitely relaxing in a sense. 

- I would like the disorders project to be removed. I think we ended up knowing a ton about one area of disorders and very little about others. I think the whole unit needs to be taught so we can have a more equally spread understanding of it.

- I would suggest spending a little more time on the theories of emotion/physiological responses of arousal (e.g. Cannon-Bard, James-Lange), as well as the types and effects of psychoactive drugs. I feel like I ran into these concepts a lot, but I didn't have much background on it from the class content. 

Alright, that's about all. Best of luck to all of you guys thinking about taking Psych.

For the last time, see you!

-JC-