It makes sense!!

Time really does fly by. I'm always floored by this phenomena. Now somethings haven't changed much-- I still have bad grammar, and my vocab... well let's just say I dread the verbal portion of the GRE. But I really have been learning a lot in college. This year I have been confident that psych is the right major for me. Not only is the topic completely fascinating to me, but I've been thinking of ways that I can actually apply things they teach to genetic counseling. It's great when you can make the connection. Now, when thoughts first started coming into my head I thought to myself that either my idea was too simple and a study had probably been done on it, or that I was confused about what we were talking about. But then I started to ask questions, and found out that I may infact have some unique and good ideas. On top of it... they might actually be testable!

Ok, I know I am more than 1,000 times more excited that you are. But you know that feeling when what you've been learning just clicks, and makes sense. That's how I feel. I find ways to connect all (or most of) my classes to eachother and how they can apply to me. It's pretty neat.

Today I met with Dr. Nygren. He's in quantitative psychology. I never would have guessed that I would like this area of study... but it just makes it easy to test your ideas. I talked to him about my idea for a research project and he said it sounded really interesting. Apparently it has never been tested before because the area of it is so knew. It's called Framing. The basic idea behind it is that the way you phrase questions is thought to be able to affect your decisions, or at least your feelings about a decison you make. ANYHOW, since it's so new they haven't tried applying it to different settings to see if it really will make a difference. So I'm going to try and develop a "tool" to see if I can find one that is either able to not be influenced by framing effects, or be able to be controlled. The idea is that you can help people make the best decision for themselves, and on top of it find a way to phrase questions that doesn't push them to make a certain decision. I actually get to do this!! YAY!!!

Ok, I've gone on too long already... But in quick other news... I've applied to SROP, now I just have to wait to see if I get in. And... I'm going to look for funding for my new research project. Apparently there are at least 3 I'm eligible for! Yay!!