On Mondays I have Research Design and Statistics 9:00-11:00 and Forensic Psychology in Practice 1:00-3:00.
I was really concerned about statistics when I took the pre-test during induction week, but as I was sitting in class a lot of what I learned four years ago was coming back to me. Every week we have to do a practical (basically an at-home "lab" with SPSS) and a quiz to check our understanding of the reading and lecture, and then on Fridays we have a workshop covering the points that most people had difficulties with. We'll be assessed by a multiple choice exam during Week 1 of next term.
Forensic Psychology in practice may be my favorite module. Each week we cover a different topic on offenders or victims and how you would deal with these people in actual practice as a psychologist. Last week we covered violent offenders. It was really interesting. My lecturer, Tracy, has a delightful "brummy" accent and was just as impressed with Heath Ledger's portrayal of a true psychopath as The Joker in The Dark Knight as I was. We discussed several violent offenders that made headlines in the United Kingdom, so I wasn't familiar with most of the cases. This module continues into term 2 and we'll be assessed at the beginning of summer term (April) with a closed informed paper. We'll have to research and prepare the answers to 4 of 12 questions with two hours to write up our answers.
Monday was extremely cold and windy (compared to the gorgeous weather so far), with a light rain all day. I walked back to the bus stop via the paths near the lake.
It's so pretty and green here. I'm loving it.
I was so cold and tired when I came home on Monday, and my heating wasn't working yet, so I put on my pajamas and crawled into bed where I watched Netflix. I got up briefly to eat and shower, then went back to bed and slept a long time.
On Tuesdays I have Legal and Contextual Issues 10:00-12:00 and Forensic and Generic Skills 2:00-4:00.
Legal and Contextual Issues will focus on the criminal justice system in the United Kingdom and theories of crime. We covered the basic court and prison system here and discussed the various categories of offenders and which prisons they are kept in, along with different kinds of secure hospitals. This module will be assessed by an open academic essay due on Monday of week 1 next term.
Forensic and Generic Skills covers skills needed as a practicing Forensic Psychology like boundaries, resilience, etc. This week we covered the reflective practice diary which is required during your period of supervision and must be turned into the British Psychological Society as part of your work towards full Chartership to become a registered Chartered Psychologist in the UK. We have to keep a reflective practice diary for each lecture during this term and go through it with our supervisor, but it is not graded. The assessment for this module is a briefing paper, which is basically translating a psychological study into non-psychological terms for someone familiar with the field (governor of a prison, secure hospital administrator, etc).
I spent the time in between classes in The Lounge, a "restaurant" (cafeteria) at James College, which is not very far from the psychology building. Lots of people and this duck walked past. Old Guy (mystery roommate) walked past the window and guess what? He was on his cell phone. Again . . . still? I'm beginning to feel a bit offended that he can't pause any of his many phone conversations long enough to at least tell his name to the people he shares a flat with. I think I may die of shock if I finally see him without his phone glued to his ear.
I came home to this "polite reminder" on the pin board next to my door. This is an abuse of using caps lock, bold face type, and underlining. Honestly.
On Wednesday I didn't have any lectures, but I had my initial appointment with a GP at the campus health center. On the way I ran into this bird having a walk near Central Hall. My doctor was nice and basically went through my health issues and the medications I take. She has a delightful habit of saying "righty-ho" as she checks each item off the list. Unfortunately, my appointment made me miss the Constantine fire drill (sarcasm).
After my appointment, I headed over to the library to check out the statistics textbook from the Key Texts collection for the maximum of four hours so I could complete my practical and quiz. I spent almost three hours scanning pages from the SPSS instruction chapters and reading the other chapters needed for this week. I was impressed by their book return conveyer belt. You feed the book into a little kiosk in the wall next to the copiers and then the books go onto this conveyer belt which scans them and then sorts the books into one of six bins. After going back to my flat for lunch I started work on the practical which took about three hours since I had to read the instruction chapters to make the graphs I needed. I hope future practicals are shorter.
The college finally figured out on Tuesday that we really weren't confused about how the heating system worked or the heating schedule. So, emergency access to all rooms was granted on Wednesday. After a maintenance worker came to check my radiator three time and I heard them going back and forth in the halls for quite awhile, a guy knocked on my door and asked me to touch my heater to see if it was warm. It was actually hot to the touch! Tanya and I had a celebration in the kitchen that we finally felt warm! I do like cool and rainy weather as long as my indoor heating is working. When I can't warm up after being outside I enjoy it considerably less.
On Thursday I had no lectures and had finished my practical and quiz, so the only thing I had to do was attend the North American Students lunch at The Glasshouse in Langwith College. The North American coordinators, Sarah and Joelle, are very nice. I met several Canadians and a few other Americans. Julie is from Vancouver and is getting her MFA in theatre. It was fun chatting with her, we may have to attend shows at the York Royal Theatre together. Pirates of Penzance and Pride and Prejudice are coming in November. Working for GEAR UP came up in conversation which led to a bunch of questions from Sarah about the high school and college credit system. I have promised to send her a bunch of websites.
I had to screenshot this for you all to see the exciting police action happening in York ;)
On Friday I attended the workshop for Research Design and then had a "cuppa" (which Safari keeps trying to change to culpa) of lemon and ginger herbal tea in the library cafe with Debbie before I went into town to get an appointment to set up my bank account. I tried calling HSBC to set up my appointment, but the woman I talked to insisted that I didn't need one even though I knew I did since every other international student has one. So, my loans were disbursed to the university on Friday morning, but I won't have access to any funds until I set up my account on the 20th and give the direct debit information to the university. The 20th at 3:30 was the soonest appointment they had. I might be able to FINALLY get some kitchen essentials and my memory foam mattress topper by my birthday. You better believe I already have my Amazon shopping cart ready.
After sorting all that out and studying for a bit, I started watching Confessions of a Shopaholic on Netflix. Towards the end of the movie music started playing so loud I couldn't hear the movie six feet away from me. When I went out into the hallway to investigate, I found it was our neighbors in D1 ground floor flat having a dance party in the hallway before they went clubbing. Despite four post grads standing in the hallway in pajamas staring at them, they didn't turn it down. I had been text-chatting with Debbie, so I called her to let her hear the noise. Even in the kitchen with the door shut, the music was SO LOUD. However, when they saw me put my phone to my ear, they turned the music off .... for awhile. Not 10 minutes later they started it up again. By that point Matt (famous for his distaste of freshers) was home from his fencing society meeting and asked them to "please be more considerate". They laughed and turned it up further. By that point I was seriously annoyed, so I called Nils and asked him to come educate our neighbors in shared housing manners. It had just turned 11:00pm, so he could enforce the quiet hours. The following video was taken between the time I called him and when he came to shut them down.
We were finally able to sleep! However, they came home from their night of clubbing at 3:47am and were laughing and yelling "WOOOOOO!" for about 20 minutes until they finally went to bed. I believe we're plotting some revenge vacuuming at 8:01am some Saturday morning since they have complained on Facebook about the cleaners waking them up at 10:00. Poor babies!
With the disturbed sleep on Friday night, I slept in later than I intended on Saturday. After studying for awhile with my window open listening to the rain and frogs, I read and watched some more Netflix.
Yesterday, I took the bus to the train station and then walked the remaining 1.3 miles to the church building. We had sacrament meeting, and then all the women, young women, and senior primary girls watched the General Women's Meeting broadcast. Which was great, except our copy cut off right after President Uchtdorf says the word "grandchildren" at the beginning of his talk. So we were challenged this week to watch the rest.
After church, all the the YSA were invited to Bishop Martin's house for a get-to-know-you lunch. The food was really good and we played a couple of games. "Empire" is one I haven't played before and I think the family would enjoy playing it at Thanksgiving/Christmas/game nights. I'll have to explain it during a Skype chat.
A couple of random anecdotes:
The Biscuit Incident:
Keita studied in Belfast last year for his Master's and mentioned his love of Irish soda bread. He was bemoaning that he hadn't found it in a shop here. I said, "But soda bread is so easy to make! It's basically biscuit dough," forgetting for a moment they would think I meant cookies. When Michael and Keita loudly objected I had to backtrack and tell them soda bread was similar to scones. Goodness! So much drama when Keita, who lived in Hawaii for four years, should know what I meant.
The Rubbish Incident:
Michael had left his empty milk jug on the counter for several days. So, when most of us were gathered in the kitchen Tanya told him loudly and slowly, like you would a child, the following: "Michael, this is trash. This is the trash bin. You need to put the trash in the trash bin." We were all laughing when Matt said to Tanya in a similar fashion, "No. This is England. That's the rubbish bin and milk carton is recycling, so we put it in the recycling bin." Touché, Matt, touché.
Lastly, a few people have asked about birthday gifts, so here are some ideas:
-Mary Kay cream eyeshadows (they don't sell them here!) Apricot Twist, Violet Storm, and Meadow Grass.
-Advocare Spark in Watermelon or Mango Strawberry
-doTerra Deep Blue Rub
-Amazon UK gift cards
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