3 posts from November 2008

Education has become more important to me as I am confronted with a new family dilemna. A family member of mine has been going through some depression problems due to losing his job and I need to incorporate my basic knowledge of Psychology to help my relative. My relative only trusts me for advice as almost everyone he has relied on failed to support him in his time of need and thus setting forth a whole new motivation and reason for me to incorporate Psychology and what possible gestures I can make to provide the help that my relative is in immediate need of.

To accomplish the best results, I am looking towards learning more about deppression and mood disorders. I am trying to look for information for depression as I look for possible solutions. So far, I have learned of some like prescribed pills and psychiatric therapy. As for mood disorders, I have also found some pills but unlike depression mood disorders are much more maladaptive and can have severe damaging results to one's relationship.

I am detemined to help my relative as I would be devastated to know that he is not doung well in his life. Most of his family has forgotten him and I am not going to be one of them. I will make sure that Ican help him. Through my education in Psychology, I will convey the best aid to buffer my relative's depression. I WILL HELP HIM! I WILL NOT FAIL! ( I used relative as I was not comfortable enough to talk about my relationship with him directly).

Recently, I have learned from a book that during Pres. Bush's term he passed a bill known as No Child Left Behind(NCLB)and its negative effects on the educational system . NLCB proposes the importance of standarized testing. So this meant that teachers were to teach only towards a good score on the nation's standarized testing exams. California's exam, the STAR test, I believe can dictate a way schools teach their students and whenever teachers teach for tests, it usually has a negative effect. This is so because the passion out of learning is over-shadowed by the incentives that are present if a school was to get a good score on the STAR test.

No Child Left Behind can also dictate the overall strategy that a teacher might want to approach. For instance, a teacher might want to teach the importance of a certain event in history because it changed the lives of many people. Well, say the star test added a broader test for history that included more things to learn and more events to test. This can be bad because a broader test means less time for teachers to emphasize on important topics that should be looked upon simply for the fact they were life changing. Students and teachers should be the ones picking the curriculum, not the test.

I believe that NCLB was a very stupid action on the President's part. It was just made so that the United States' test scores can compete with other European and Asian countries who tend to have great scores. I believe that scores on a test say nothing about a nation it is simply a number. It absolutely does not say anything about the overall happiness of a nation's people.

So far, I have been feeling more and more in control of my classes at CCSF. I have Had some minor setbacks, but it has been improving rapidly with my improved effort. I work a full time job, so full effort meant writing essays that usually took me until early morning to finish. It has been manageable so far even though, surprisingly, I get a lot less sleep than I had ever had.

My future advice for any working student is do not get a full time job unless you are absolutely required to. Working takes energy and time, two things that should be devoted to school. Barring those students that go to school to just socialize, all students should do their best because in the end they are going to school for benefits to themselves. 

One more advice that i can offer is KEEP A PLANNED SCHEDULE. I have found it to be very useful. Especially now that most classes use Worth Publisher's portal cards. Schedules are also very helpful because it gives one something to start on. What I mean by this is that for people like me, who usually dont know what to start on first, get the help of having a study plan and knock out assignment after assignment quickly, efficiently, and conveniently.