Our content portrays pre-adulthood as the formative stage amongst youth and adulthood. At the end of the day, our middle school and high school years. The phase in our lives in which we go from being a boy or a girl into a man or lady. In my younger years, I would depict myself as an exceptionally enthusiastic individual. As are numerous in their adolescent years, hormones are dynamic and our bodies experience numerous progressions that influence our conduct. One exceptionally important and unsafe conduct that wound up evident amid my high school years was quite the roller coaster. Numerous adolescents experience a stage where it appears the entire world is slamming down on them.
Trying to balance the lifestyle of playing sports, maintaining good grades, and even trying to accompany a somewhat social life as well. Adolescents like this have a tendency to pull back from companions and associates. I myself experienced a minor stage where I displayed indications of sadness, had lost hunger, and had issues resting. Being continuously busy and trying to balance an adequate amount of time for everything and everyone around me was a struggle. I had issues in school sometimes when it came to going to school for 7 hours, playing sports, and then to work, and also trying to squeeze in time to eat a meal for dinner.
Going through such an emotional roller coaster in my being of becoming a “woman,” I have learned to appreciate everything that has been placed and removed in my life. The typical teenage years of course can be a downfall at times, but that is how we learn from our mistakes and continue to progress forward. That is why I want to be just as good of a parent as my parents were to me. My way of how I want to parent my own children will solely be similar to how my parents raised me.
Throughout this semester in psychology class we have taken various surveys that think about our identity as a man and give a knowledge concerning why we may act or carry on the way we do. The greater part of these inventories decided a portion of similar things I pondered myself while thinking back on my life. A portion of these reviews would not be what I call a right double dealing of myself however the vast majority of them associated with how I act and act throughout everyday life. While taking these survey’s, it influenced me to consider how my activities truly do impact how I act and the motivation behind why I do a portion of the things that I do. I picked five concepts that truly affected to me and that I thought depicted me entirely well. The five most common topics that were covered in this course are subjects of developmental psychology that applies and affects my development in life: stress, motivation, memory, learning, and sensation.
Stress fortifies our lives by exciting and inspiring us. There are different events that can trigger our stress response as well. While stress is unavoidable, there is trust: Feelings of individual control, illustrative style, and strong associations all impact our capacity to adapt to pressure effectively. Which can also affect us sensationally. In class we took the survey, Are you Highly Sensitive? A Self-Test. Answering each question to the way I personally feel using the scale, here are a few example questions that I answered as the following – with 1 being not sensitive at all, 4 being moderately sensitive, and 7 being extremely: “Do you find yourself needing to withdraw during busy days, into bed or into a darkened room or any place where you can have some privacy and relief from stimulation?”, “Does your nervous system sometimes feel so frazzled that you just have to go off by yourself?”, Do you get rattled when you have a lot to do in a short amount of time?”, Do you try hard to avoid making mistakes or forgetting things?”, When you must compete or be observed while performing a task, do you become so nervous or shaky that you do much worse that you would otherwise?” Between all of these questions I ranked roughly a 6 or 7 on some of these. According to our textbook for class, “stressors are unavoidable” (Myers, 2014). Our sensation plays a vast roll in processing these stressors. Sensation is essentially the procedure by which our sensory receptors and nervous system get and speak to stimulus energies from our environment. These can then in turn affect us mentally and emotionally. Some of the signs that I notice when I am too stressed out are; exhaustion and a weakening immune system. I begin to start to get a cold and feel super weak and tired. Learning to manage the stress that interferes with my everyday living, I try to adjust to those stressors that trigger my anxiety. For example, I also tend to feel very anxious in random situations. My way of handling this stress is handled through emotion-focused coping.
Motivation is my favorite topic we covered in class, along with it being the most interesting. For class, we had done another survey called the Hope Scale, which helped us determine our motivation, hope, thought-process, and creativity. Some of the statements include; “I energetically pursue my goals”, “My past experiences have prepared me well for my future”, and “I meet the goals that I set for myself.” With 1 being ranked as “definitely false” and 4 being ranked “definitely true.” For these questions, I ranked them as a 4, because I know that whatever I set my mind to, I will accomplish and not quit until it is finished. My parents have always raised me to be the best at everything that comes my way, and with that I will use those terms to energize me toward the fulfillment of my goals. Throughout this course, I have realized how important it is to set goals. Whether it be short term goals, long term goals, whatever it may be, according to Fongheiser, “goal setting is an inherent component of human behavior.”
Another developmental topic that we discussed in class was memory and learning. In huge part, we are what we recall. Without memory—our storage place of comprehensive learning—there would be no enjoying of past events, no blame or resentment regarding excruciating memories. Growing up, memory used to be a struggle for me, especially in English classes. I remember in elementary school, I would have to work one-on-one with teachers to help improve my reading comprehension skills because I could only recall very little of the text unlike most kids. This “flaw” that I had growing up motivated me to become a better reader and listener. I had to learn new ways to improve my reading comprehension skills, work on relapsing and using my memory to summarize the chapter in the book. I had to increase my self-efficacy as a person, in order for me to have the ability to succeed in situations and tasks.
Developmental psychology helps me understand the way in which people grow and cultivate to different life stages and learn to adapt to situations. This class has helped me improve and enhance my knowledge to overcome developmental challenges and reach my full potential. Applying the different theories and studying the variety of theoretical areas, such as biological, social, emotion, and cognitive processes (McLeod, 2012).