New Year, New Semester

It's 2021! That means that we're starting a new year and a new semester. This fall has been a bit more difficult than past semesters for me, especially because of online and hybrid learning. This semester, I'm sure, will pose similar challenges. However, I feel much more prepared to manage my time and get as much as possible out of my classes! 

For spring semester, I'll be taking GEND200: Genders and Sexualities in the US, which I'm excited about! Even though I'm a Psychology major, I've wanted to take a gender studies class since starting college. I'm curious to see what it will be like. I'm also taking MATH105: Perspectives in Statistics. I took PSY200 (Statistics for Psychology) last year, so I'm hopeful that this math class will mostly be review. It might also help me with my practicum! 

I will be taking a practicum with one of my psych professors, Jolina Ruckert. I took my capstone with her last semester and loved it! This semester I'll be working (mostly independently) on a research study about common predictors of behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as social distancing and mask-wearing, and pro-environmental behavior. This is similar to the topic for my capstone, but I'll likely be looking at more complex predictors, like locus of control and working memory capacity. It feels a bit daunting to get started on this project since it'll be mostly self-directed, but luckily I've checked out several books about survey research and statistics, since this project will go beyond the statistics knowledge I have from previous classes. I plan on doing some initial reading over these last two weeks of break! 

Over break, I've been watching a lot of Survivor, learning to play chess with my roommates, working on puzzles, learning to use Garageband, and doing some journaling. I have way more books on my shelf than I can realistically read, but I'm hoping to at least start some of them!