When I picked out this class during registration last spring, I wasn't sure what I was going to be getting myself into. I had heard that the class was not the easiest class out there and it was a class where I was going to have to work hard for the assignments. But knowing that it was a level 400 class, I was expecting a bit of a challenge.

On top of that, the topic is very interesting to me. I had the ideas of behaviorism and conditioning repeated and preached to me in so many different psychology classes, I was curious to what kind of views the field had towards the mind itself. You can condition a behavior in someone, sure. But what does that look like when it is being processed in someone’s head? How do we decide to react to the stimuli we do from the viewpoint of the mind? How do elements such as attention, memory and what we perceive from the stimuli effect how we react? This is a side of the field of psychology I’m not really knowledgeable about, and wanting to be a well-rounded student in the study of psychology I decided this was a topic I wanted to learn more about. So here I am, sitting on my bed writing this cog-blog as a result.

This semester I hope to expand my knowledge in the field of cognitive psychology and have a better understanding of how the mind plays a role in how we think, process, and act on given stimuli based on previous experiences or stored information. My goal is to leave this class with an understanding of cognitive psychology that I can apply in the field when I am a practicing mental health worker in a way that benefits my skills and my clients. I feel that having an understanding of this branch of psychology is important in being an effective mental health worker because the mind is a person’s most powerful and self-destructive method. With a better idea of how the mind functions in a psychological light, it will allow me to look at presented issues with a set of tools that could mean the difference between giving a client a quick fix and a permanent set of tools that will benefit them for years to come.