YEAR 7 PSYCHOLOGY TRIP

Surrey University was the destination of the ‘Year 7 - Know Your Mind Day’.  Minutes after parking the minibus, we were welcomed by the student ambassadors. We were then led to a room in the Psychology Department where we made an array of mind maps about what Psychology is. As soon as we finished our brainstorming ideas, Emily, our main guide, handed us booklets and commenced the next activity with great delight. Emily briefly explained that we can all be forgetful in many occasions as we cannot remember every detail specifically.  She showed us that even the police cannot trust witnesses, despite their encounters, because of their memory and observation skills – this was put to the test and proved correct throughout the day with us missing and forgetting many things!

Prior to lunch, we completed a scavenger hunt which gave us a great idea of both how massive the campus was and how many different subjects they teach. The afternoon session included more testing of our memory. An ambassador read out twenty random words and we were supposed to memorize the words and recall them – this was much easier in the quiet room than in the distraction room, where we had to listen to the words whilst keeping a balloon from touching the floor and listening to Taylor Swift.  It was a great lesson in how distractions can affect our ability to learn! The final task was a debate where we listened to our peers’ ideas and we spoke about our own perspective on the idea of nature and nurture.

Written by Harish Balasingam