My 1st university open event experience (3/12/2022)

OMG, I have just had one of the best experiences of my life! What I've experienced today has really opened my eyes to how psychology can go a long way into the world. It's not just my eyes that have opened up to everything I had seen today, my mind has also widely opened up to the mass amount of psychology careers there are out there.

To prevent me from rambling on anymore, I'll go straight into the story from start - finish...

 

2 weeks ago today, (19/11/2022) I booked myself to go to my 1st ever university open event. Fast forward to after a fortnight of excitement later... I had the morning pleasure of trekking down to Solent University in Southampton for what was unknowingly an eye-opening experience.

As I arrived at the building entrance, I was greeted by a member of the open event team who kindly made me feel welcome by handing me an open event programme. From that moment, I was deciding what to go and see. Whilst curiously scrolling through my programme, I saw that there was a psychology talk happening in one of the rooms on the 1st floor. Of course I chose to venture up there!

Inside one of their rooms to begin with, myself & a load of other people were warmly introduced to 2 of the psychology lectures. Both of whom, seemed experienced enough with years of being in the psychology industry. Hence, their industry knowledge was, needles to say, phenomenal! The male & female lectures hosted a quiz activity, which was to basically test everyone's knowledge of psychology. The first being to name as many famous psychologists as possible. Fortunately for me, I was able to name a few. At the same time, however, I do need to brush up my knowledge of famous psychologists a bit better if I want to expand my knowledge. The various other questions we did was based upon reading people's emotions through the look in their eyes. I couldn't remember the purpose of what the other questions were aimed at, but I had found them fascinating nonetheless. After the psychology quiz, the male lecturer was telling us something that made me view psychology from a whole different angle. It went along the lines of: "Psychology is not just about mental health". I absolutely agree with what the male lecture was saying, as psychology has an overall purpose of behaviour of anything. When I say 'anything' I am talking about animal behaviour as well.

One of the 3rd year students who was doing a psychology degree in counselling, was happily sharing her own personal experience of her time studying at the university. She was even highlighting her time studying abroad in Canada. The remainder of her talk was all about doing work placements around the university area. I think it was safe to say that the female student was enthusiastic throughout her time speaking!

The female lecturer was then going through Levels 4 - 6, explaining what different psychology degree modules will typically be taught. It was amazing to see how many of these degree courses have psychology alongside them. They all consisted of: Sport Psychology, Psychology & Counselling, Criminology & Psychology, Sociology & Psychology or just Psychology on its own.

Afterwards, we all went into the room next door to be shown a little fun psychological experiment. 3 people had volunteered themselves to be hooked up to this special piece of machinery, which was connected to the room computer. The computer screen was displaying these graphical lines that illustrated how calm these 3 people were, while sitting in the chair doing self-humiliating things. The 1st person had to count back from 280 in 3's. The 2nd person had to bravely sing a Christmas song in front of all of us watching. I can't remember what the 3rd person did.

All in all, the small psychology taster activities were very eye-opening, which really helped me to further widen my passion for psychology to a better level. Literally, the second I had walked out of the building, my motivation was kicked into overdrive. I was just now so keen to get myself into the psychology industry like never before!

To top everything off, I will be attending the open event at Portsmouth University the following Saturday. I expect more or less the same from today's open event at Solent, but it could be different anything. Regardless, I shall very much be looking forward to it!