Leggo my ego

Hello! I've finally returned back to school from Thanksgiving break.

Before I left I had made great headway with my Experimental Methods in psychology project; I had successfully collected twenty-five points of data from Clark students, as had the three other members of my group. Additionally, I was able to draft out the methods section of my final paper (using APA format), without too much difficulty. Because our data has not yet been analyzed, I left specific values blank, substituting an X for the time being; for example, I wrote "a questionnaire was distributed to X undergraduate students at Clark University".

Though it feels sometimes that I am simply running through the motions of conducting an experiment without much purpose (our hypothesis is interesting but of course our sample is limited, seeing as it is a convenience sample made up of the Clark student body), I feel as though this core class is rather necessary. It has given me a concrete idea of what it could be like to conduct research, as well as re-asserting concepts such as ethical values (we don't want another Milgram Experiment  dilemma). Overall this class has been extremely beneficial (and required for Psychology majors), despite its somewhat mundane content at times. I am grateful (get it? Because Thanksgiving just happened) for the opportunity to actually follow-through with collecting and analyzing real data points, especially after hearing from an older student that this class hasn't always been run this way; it used to be that data analyzing was practiced, but using made-up data.

The semester is almost over and classes will become a bit more intense in these last two weeks, with everyone trying to finish up chapters and projects and papers. I will keep updating with my data analyses and conclusions from Experimental Methods, as well as with points of interest from my other two classes. Belated happy Thanksgiving wishes to everyone!