PS3020: Individual Differences

Last week was the first week of term, meaning all our new modules have now started, and we have had a taste of each. I am so excited!

The module I wanted to talk about in this blog post is PS3020, Individual Differences. This module focuses on the differences observed between single individuals, but that are not accounted for by psychological models (e.g. for memory, personality, behaviour etc.). In other words, differences that make us, “us”. But what I really wanted to talk about is how the module is going to be handled. After a brief introduction, the lecturer (John Maltby) talked to us about the exam. There are gonna be six questions, of which we will be required to ask two, and we are going to have six lectures in total. Therefore, “the way he sees it”, why don’t we have every lecture on a different topic? This way, we will be free to choose two topics we like from the beginning, focus on those topics, and be able to predict roughly what question will come up before entering the exam.

This attitude alone would deserve a round of applause. But it didn’t end here!
We spent the remaining part of the lecture democratically deciding the six topics we will be focusing on!

From twelve initial topics we collectively decided on six, on which we will work from now on. Of course it’s difficult to find six topics that are liked by everyone, but it’s important to remember that at the end of the day, we can only (and already!) choose two. I’m gonna go with Social Anxiety (fancy that!) and Irrational Thoughts (although this one one might change). I’ll talk more about them once we’ve had the relevant lecture. This doesn’t mean I won’t go to the other lectures! Quite the contrary, I’m loving the prospect of attending this module, especially after such a great first impression. 🙂

I really appreciate our lecturer’s outlook on education. I think it’s the right attitude! Now not only we are free to choose something that interest us and we’re passionate about, but by knowing (roughly) the exam question we’ll be able to work on providing our personal input and opinion, something that is quite difficult to accomplish with more widespread topics. It’s great. Just great!

Despite being still stressed about my dissertation, this makes me quite happy. 🙂