While completing the FLE community education project, I not only enhanced my knowledge on the topic of emotional and psychological intimate partner violence but I was also able to gain other skills as well. For instance, this project specifically made us pick a target audience which helped us narrow down our research and set the tone of our project. We decided on young to middle-aged women because we believed this group would be most affected by this type of IPV, and we were correct. We also picked this type of violence because both my partner and I felt that this type of violence is often looked over and victims themselves do not often realize that they are in a situation with this type of abuse. Our goal with this project was to take as much information as we found, summarize it, and create a fact sheet/ infographic that would make it accessible to anyone, but specifically women. After doing research, we found that most of our assumptions on the topic were correct. Yet, even being a psychology major, I still found the statistics of most victims finding emotional abuse to be more damaging than any physical abuse to be extremely surprising. The main takeaway from this is we can never understand the impact that psychological/ emotional abuse has on someone because it is difficult to see. This type of abuse does not heal naturally over time. Often, victims live in the aftermath of this abuse for their whole life, and even if they move past it there is a chance of its effects coming back. From this, it can affect other relationships because of how detrimental the effects of psychological abuse it. This type of abuse can cause extreme mental health problems which can then impact how an individual interacts on a day-to-day basis. This only furthered my understanding of the lasting and detrimental effects of family violence as a whole because it can then affect not just the victim but also the family. The ramifications of IPV has lasting effects that most do not even consider, especially phycological/ emotional abuse.

I believe our final product is exactly what we had in mind when we originally decided to make an infographic/ fact sheet. It has just enough information that it helps educate not only victims but also others so they can help recognize IPV. However, if I were to do something different I would have looked for more statistics to help people understand the significance our product has. I think if we had one or two more statistics then we could have deleted a few more words or sentences which could have made the final product more aesthetically pleasing and easier for people to read.

Overall, working on this project with my partner has allowed me to gain valuable skills. For instance, I now know how to write a product proposal while citing key sources. Originally, I was confused, but after talking it through with Yenci we figured out how to not just summarize the articles but instead state how the information we found would be valuable to our product. This will help me professionally and while in graduate school because Yenci and I were able to talk things out until we figured out what was being asked of us. This is a valuable skill someone will need in their professional career. I also now know how to write a different form of paper other than a typical APA research paper which will help me while I continue my education because you should be able to write in different styles. Also, creating the final product allowed me to access a side of my brain I typically do not use. The final product itself allowed me to use my creative side more which will help in the future in graduate school because I will be asked to do more than just write papers. Moreover, working in a pair and learning how to talk through things and figure out what direction we want to go in will help me tremendously in the future because of the profession I want to pursue. Moreover, Yenci, and I are both similar concerning what skills we have so we did not delegate our tasks based on skill; instead, we focused on completing things together so no one person was doing things by themselves. This allowed us to have open communication and no confusion on what we were doing. Looking back on our communication, I believe something I brought to the pair that benefited us the most was my ability to communicate and speak up when I felt as though we were falling behind on our work. This is also where I believe the reason Yenci and I could also improve on as a collective. We never turned anything in late or felt rushed but often we would text one another and say “oh did you see this part is due”. We would then plan to complete it but we just let the project slip our mind too often. We could both individually improve on this area in the future.

The FLE project taught me a lot about the impact of emotional/ psychological abuse and how it needs to be addressed more. Working on this project in a group also showed me the areas that I excel in but also the areas I could improve on in the future.