Navigating a Psychology Degree: hannxm's GYG thread ♥

Subbed.

Good luck!

I graduated last year in psychology (not with OU though), so if you need any help, let me know!

Wooh!


Thank-you! Congrats on graduating. What topic did you like the most? And also, do you study neuroscience at some point?

Thanks.

I liked a lot of different topics, abnormal psychology and emotion were really fun to me. I did do some neuroscience and that was also super interesting.

My favourite was probably language related though (also related to neuroscience), it was what I ended up doing my dissertation on as well (got 76 on that wasn't particularly focussed on neuroscience though).

That's cool! I'm interested in the abnormal psychology too, because who's interested in normal?! Do you cover a bit of forensic in it too? It seems to cover a lot of bases this degree.
I thought it did have some neuroscience in it, I just wanted to check. 😊 That does sound interesting! What was your final grade? And how did you manage with statistics?

Exactly!

I didn't do forensic psychology modules, i mostly chose social/clinical stuff in my optional modules (I did do forensic psychology UCL course...thing in year 9 though, that was fun ). Are you particularly interested in forensic psychology?

Technically I graduated twice, the first time was with a 2.i honours. But I had extenuating circumstances and I was allowed to do an uncapped resit and the grade from that increased from like 53 to 70-something and it bumped my degree mark up enough to allow me to graduate with a first. I think they called it graduation with reassessment. Still not entirely sure how I pulled that off as I was very ill at the time (still am).

Also technically my degree mark is under the 70 boarder for a first, but like most universities mine have other ways of calculating final grades. I had 120 credits at first class standard and my degree mark was 69 so they bumped my grade up.

Statistics was my most hated subject (I loathe maths), but I gradually got better, ended up being my best grade over all aha. Not sure if this is the same for all universities that do BPS accredited psychology degrees but my university combined research methods and statistics into our dissertation. Hence it was a shock when I opened the results page and saw 76! I remember panicking to my mum before sending it in because I was convinced I was going to fail.

I do have an interest in it but not sure what route to take so chose to just do straight psychology and choose the modules that interest me and see what one I like the most! There are more clinical jobs available than forensic though.
Aw well that worked out well for you! I hope I can do well! My tutor has said I'm doing a good job already and my line of thought seems to be quite a way ahead.
Everyone's nervous about statistics at the moment. 😂 Mine is BPS accredited too so mine will likely be similar. So what did your dissertation cover exactly?

Progress: Achieved 83% in my first assignment (kind of like a B+). Draft for my second assignment completed.

How I'm feeling: I know people will say that's a great score for your first assignment but, for some reason, I had my sights set on 90%+. It seems my assignment was very good with no major issues and all of her comments were positive, so much so that I didn't actually know what I needed to improve on, but my tutor is a little strict in her marking it seems. My mum suggested it could be that she's giving a leeway for herself and can't really give someone 100% on their first assignment (someone got that btw) as there is no room for improvement and then the student feels they must get 100% every time, so she makes good points. I'm not the kind of person to set my expectations high in fear of disappointment, but it seems I've done exactly that in this instance. It's also a little annoying that she's done 83% and not 85% because 85% is considered an excellent pass so it feels almost like I was 2% off an A. Anyway, I know I'm being hard on myself and that I should shut up and be happy, especially as my first year is all about passing and I more than doubled the score you actually need to pass.
The module is getting more interesting for me though as we're talking about social disorder and socialisation.

More written here in my other blog.

Module emoji summary:

Well done!

Your mum is right in a way. My university didn't really hand out anything above 80%+ (very rarely did this happen) unless it was statistics or MCQ exams. OU could be different, not sure. (MCQ also had negative marking. )

83% is amazing though!! Don't compare your grades to those around you, it'll only upset you, just compare it to your previous work and see where you can improve.

Thanks for the wise words. Yes, OU marking is slightly different. If you get 70% in your university, it would be the equivalent of 85% for us, but the amount of work is the same, if that makes sense? People say that this means the OU is more generous in marks or is a lot easier but this isn't true at all. Just the marking criteria is slightly different.

I'm not sure if brick unis mark each assignment and then they're divided by a weighted percentage and each assignment is weighted differently? I got 83 and this assignment is weighted at 10% so I will get 8.3 points. My next one is 20% and so on. It increases as you go along, so the bigger and more complicated assignments near the end are the most important ones.

No, I think the difficulty is essentially the same, especially among accredited degrees. People are misinformed. Take no notice.

Yeah, they are, at my university we had percentages within modules for different pieces of assessed work (like reports, essays, exams, etc.), those were added up to give you your module grade. That module also had a credit weighting for that year. And each year had a percent weighting as well - think the split was 40:60, first year didn't count. Credits in third year were "worth" the more too. But yeah, the further along the more complicated it got. The assessed piece of work that was "worth" the most was my dissertation (it was worth 90% of the module, the other 10% was a poster ) - the dissertation itself was worth 13.5% of my degree or something. Remember my supervisor telling me and my dissertation partner repeatedly the first couple of times we went to see him about it.

Ha, sorry if that's confusing.

I try not to take notice of the criticisms of the OU but some things can be frustrating!

That made sense to me and sounds similar to the OU! Our first year also doesn't count.
What was your dissertation on?

Understandable! One of my frienss is doing her degree with OU and used to get irritated by it. People just don't know what they're talking about honestly.

Was language based. Basically how distractors affect our ability to name objects and how synonyms affect it too. I found it interesting because I kind of went down the psycholinguistic route and looked at neuroscience and stuff in the introduction and discussion. It was pretty convoluted for an undergraduate dissertation lol but we had to make it complex because of working in a pair.

Do you have any idea about what you might like to do your dissertation on?

How is she finding it?

That's interesting. Do you study language and the brain in psychology then?

Not really but I love horror movies and have always been quite interested in why people love to scare themselves and also how the new generation are almost desensitised to them, making film producers step up to the plate and create scarier films.
And I like the psychology behind horror movies in general, how they're made and how some effects have a bigger effect on people than others.
Of course, I will wait to nearer the time and see what topic really interests me, that I learn about in my degree.

She enjoys it, think she prefers it over going to a brick university like she was at before.

I chose to in some of my optional modules, yeah.

Haha, that's pretty cool actually, if you do get to do that, I'd love to know what the outcome is! I like playing/watching scary survival horror games because then I feel more in control of my anxiety (which is bizarre considering I have CPTSD). Guess it's kind of cathartic too.

I've heard a few people who studied in a brick uni prefer the OU and find they get more support.

That's a different view on it that I hadn't considered! Sorry to hear about your anxiety. I can't play horror games, but I love horror movies, which is weird. I only watch pewds play horror games because his reactions are hilarious.