Goal Fulfilled:

PSYC 101, Introduction to Psychology, which I satisfactorily completed during the Spring 2020 semester, fulfilled my Civitae Pillar course requirement for Scientific Reasoning. I previously fulfilled my Civitae Pillar course requirement for Quantitative Reasoning through a dual enrollment course offered through Southside Virginia Community College, MATH 162, PreCalculus II, while in high school.

Reflection:

Science courses are not my strong suit. Selecting a class to fulfill Longwood’s Scientific Reasoning Pillar thus proved a daunting task my Freshman year. When I first registered for classes in Summer 2019, I enrolled myself in an Honors section of Environmental Science, but it was ultimately cancelled before the semester began. I decided I would wait until the Spring semester to select a new course.

That was a bad idea.

By the time Spring 2020 rolled around, I had not taken a Science class since my Senior year of high school. Chemistry, Biology, and Physics all sounded impossible, and Environmental Science was no longer being offered for Honors credit. After careful consideration, I decided upon PSYC 101, Introduction to Psychology, to fulfill my Civitae requirement.

I am so glad I did.

Unlike most of the other classes I have taken at Longwood, I knew very little about the subject material of PYSC 101 before class began. Whereas I am always somewhat knowledgable of the topics discussed in my History classes beforehand, Psychology posed unique challenges, but I can confidently say now that I learned an incredible amount of information during my minimal experience with the class. As I progressed through the course, I was consistently presented with new information and boggling statistics regarding the psychological habits of other human beings and myself. Though the COVID-19 pandemic inevitably cut our classroom time in half, I enjoyed our discussions both in class and at home.

Along with nine weekly quizzes and two exams, each student was assigned a comprehensive research paper on a psychological topic of their choosing. The paper was submitted in parts at three different points in the semester: first an annotated reference page with five sources of our choosing, followed by a rough draft, and ultimately the final paper. I researched the latent effects of violence in children and young adults, and my final paper may be found in PDF form below.