Assignment Task:
Instructions:
One of the Psychology Program Goals is to:
Apply major concepts, theoretical perspectives, empirical findings, and historical trends in psychology to prepare for graduate studies or careers in which psychological training is relevant.
Reflecting on the goals shared in your Week 1 Journal, how can you apply what you learned this week in support of those goals? Need Assignment Help?
Psychology of Stress
Short-Term goals: Curricular and Personal Learning.
This course will be necessary in the short term to enrich my curricular knowledge and improve my well-being. Academically, I would like to master the theoretical foundations of stress, along with physiological (e.g., the HPA axis) and cognitive (e.g., the paradigm of Lazarus and Folkman) appraisals. This will be directly relevant to my other studies in cognitive neuroscience and health psychology that will lend me a critical perspective in which to view issues such as performance under pressure, memory consolidation, and the development of chronic diseases. There is a particular connection between perceived control and stress resilience that I would like to research, and I will be able to do it during this semester as a part of my capstone project.
I am committed to improving my personal stress and emotional control. I usually feel overwhelmed with both the requirements of a strict academic course and my roles as a volunteer mentor. In my opinion, the course will provide me with evidence-based coping mechanisms, rather than mere theoretical ideas of stressor management, through learning of the psychological effects of stressors, which, in turn, would equip me with such coping strategies as mindfulness, cognitive restructuring, and time management depending on the perceived threat. The immediate personal objective that I have is to always incorporate at least two additional, scientifically proven stress-reduction methods into my weekly routine in order to enhance my concentration and vitality all the way through the semester.
Long-term goals: professional and extracurricular effect.
The knowledge of this course has provided the basis of my future professional goal: to be an Organizational Development (OD) Consultant with a focus on employee well-being and performance. In this career, I will work to design and implement interventions that reduce workplace stress, enhance organizational culture, and increase productivity. The Psychology of Stress will equip me with the words and statistics to critically evaluate the stress environment of a company that detects burnout causes, role ambiguity, and work imbalance. To be more precise, I will use the knowledge about the stress inoculation training and restorative environmental design principles to design healthier and more sustainable work systems.
In my extracurricular activities, I will use this profound knowledge as I proceed with my activities in the local youth organizations. Over time, I would hope that I would be able to create a more detailed, empirically based high school stress literacy curriculum. This course offers the scientific validity to go beyond general recommendations and educate them on the safeguarding forces against stress and the health outcomes of uncontrolled anxiety in the long term, which ultimately enables them to overcome future educational and professional difficulties in the most effective ways. My long-term aim is to contribute to changing the discourse of stress avoidance to stress mastery in my life, my future work environment, and eventually in the community I will be working in.