Final Journal

Mahnoor Tariq 21-10533

Forman Christian College  

Cognitive Psychology Psych 315 

Elizabeth Schweiger  

February 15, 2021 

 
 Final Journal

Cognitive psychology was an interesting course, and ma’am Elizabeth made it even more

exciting for the students. Despite the blended schedule, this course was taught completely online.

The course had its ups and downs, but it was a good experience. At start, I was really scared as

this course had SPSS, and I personally don’t enjoy it. However, with time I really enjoyed this

course.

I would like to mention, that before studying this course, it was quite challenging for me

to understand the brain structures and the classification of its different sections. However, now I

am to some extent better able to distinguish between the four lobes, and its different functions.

My favorite topics in this course were problem solving and human memory.

The part I loved the most during this course were the recap sheets and lab tasks that used

to be given during the lab classes. I still remember the first recap sheet I did; I was truly excited

for the “draw an image of a concept” question and tried to draw something related to the topic

instead of a boring flowchart. In every recap sheet, I tried to draw something unique yet related

to the specific course we studied that day. The principle question, the recap sheet included was

very innovative. In this question we had to write about how we would apply a concept to our

daily life. I agree, it was a little challenging, but it made us think deeper about the concepts we

learned.

The recap sheets were a really good way to retain the topics in our mind every day. The

other advantage of the recap sheets for me was that it increased my attention span during the

lectures, as to write the recap sheets we had to carefully listen to the lectures and then jot them

down. Writing the recap sheets were a really good way to increase our productivity and keep our
minds active daily. In my opinion, instead of taking a quiz after 2-3 weeks, the recap sheets are

way better. Quizzes make the students study just a certain topic, either 3 to 4 days before the

quiz, or they drag it till the last day. But with recap sheets, you must go through your course

material every day to write them. I would wish for all the teachers to apply this technique in all

their courses, as it really helps you get a better idea of what is going on throughout the course.

This opportunity to do well offers the students a sense of self-confidence, which makes them

perform better in the rest of the semester.

The lab tasks given to perform in the lab classes were very exciting. I personally liked the

“Stroop Effect”. The test had around 20-25 words written in different colors. The most

interesting fact was that the name of colors was written in different colors such as, red was

written in green color or blue was written in yellow color. What we had to do was read the

words, I thought it would be easy. However, reading the words without getting distracted by the

colors they were written in was a little challenging but fun. We did a new and different task in

every lab, which increased our knowledge in brain and human mind and behavior.

One of the other lab tasks were the “clock-draw test”. I got over-confident with regards to

this test. We had to draw a clock with the hands and numbers. Again, I thought I’ll be able to do

it in a minute, but by the time I reached 9, there was no space left for the number 10, 11, and 12.

This triggered my anxiety, I knew I had to do it again until all the numbers were in the right

place.

This pandemic had made everyone’s routine disturbed and studying almost the whole

semester online was a tough thing which we somehow survived. I personally was having a lot of

memory issues, because of which I would forget submitting the recap sheet although I had it
done before the deadline. I even used to forget taking the daily classes, even though it wasn’t a

thing to forget as it was our routine to take classes every day. My memory issues disturbed me a

lot, for which I had to set an alarm for almost everything, such as cases, deadlines, even the

normal routine tasks to do. Ma’am Elizabeth was very supportive and gave everyone a chance to

complete all their tasks and made every assignment as continent as she could.

During this tough time ma’am Elizabeth made a lot of efforts to solve every kind of

problem the students faced and tried to provide all kinds of alternatives to the challenges faced in

the semester. She tried her best to greet every single student in the class and ensure whether that

person is mentally present in the class or not. Most of the teachers don’t even bother checking

the assignments and projects or give feedbacks on them, not even in the end of the semester. This

makes it hard for us to check where we stand in the course, or how well did we perform in the

certain assignment which is kind of disturbing as we are never able to see the scores.

Nevertheless, the feedbacks provided in this course really boosted my self-confidence and I got

to learn a lot where I needed improvement.

To sum up everything that has been stated so far, I enjoyed and learnt a lot from cognitive

psychology such as. There were a lot of interesting facts I hadn’t known until now such as, how

dolphin language has so many interesting facts, how is memory stored, how new memories are

created, which lab tests are used to assess what, etc. The kind of image I had in mind for

cognitive psychology was completely opposite for me in practical. Cognitive psychology made

me learn that sometimes what we think we can do can be challenging for us and what we think is

impossible can be done easily. Cognitive psychology never stops to amaze me with its

interesting facts and vast knowledge.