#psyc 314

[ayyellesrambles]

Hi, I'm currently taking PSYC 314 online and not sure if you will answer my question, but for the first paper what did you write about? I'm having trouble with starting on my assignment because I'm not sure what the appropriate topic will be

I wrote about stress and its effects on cardiovascular disease. You can always double check with your TA by posting on the discussion boards on Connect, I found the TA to be very responsive. I did that to make sure my topic was appropriate. 

[ayyellesrambles]

I’m about 2 months late...but...

TERM 1 WINTER 2016 COURSE REVIEW

Because despite me being a lazy ass and not actually posting anymore, you guys are still Googling and finding my blog, so here’s another mini review of the courses I took during term 1! 

CPSC 313  I’m not a hardware person at all, so I was a little nervous going into this course. It was tough at times, but I felt like I learned a lot, the last part of the course on operating systems was particularly interesting. If I weren’t planning on graduating, I might’ve taken the advanced operating systems course. This course is a very typical UBC CPSC course, except there weren’t any labs, we had tutorials instead. 

CPSC 344 This course was really interesting too, I’ve always been interesting in UI/UX and being able to learn about all the science behind the design of the software applications we use today is pretty neat. This course as a lot of work though, we had group projects for this course, and there were milestones we had to hand in every week. I think there was probably only 1 or 2 weeks where I didn’t stay on campus until 8/9 PM working with my group. The requirements for the project weren’t necessarily hard, there was just a lot of stuff to do. We had workshops every week where we’d go over the latest milestone we handed in with the TA and worked on the project a bit. Some people don’t like this course because there isn’t a lot of programming involved, but I think HCI is something to consider for all developers. At the end of the day, you’re developing products for other users and not just for other developers. If you’re not into group work, I wouldn’t recommend this class, I probably spent more time with my group mates than with my friends during the term haha. My group was great though, so I didn’t really mind. #TeamTorbay

PSYC 314 I took this course online to fill an exemption I had. We had 2 papers and a final exam, so the work load wasn’t heavy at all, I was definitely very happy for that. This course is focused on health psychology and I was experiencing a bit of “Medical Student’s Disease” as I was taking it, but I’m a lot more conscious about my life decisions now and try to at least eat healthier and take the stairs...Overall, the course is pretty chill, but there’s quite a bit to memorize and it took me back to the days I took CAPS. 

STAT 300 I chose to take this course as part of my bridging module, and I had not taken stats in a very long time. I regretted it a bit during the first few classes because I had forgotten so much, thankfully there was a bit of a review period for the first 2 weeks of class. The concepts weren’t too difficult to grasp and I found it interesting to learn some more advanced statistical analysis techniques. I like looking at data and trying to make decisions based on data analytics, so this course was definitely up my alley. The exams were a bit weird, with the 2-stage thing, but other than that, I found the course pretty useful overall. Since this was an application class, my classmates were from all different types of disciplines, and they made groups for us based on those differences. I was grouped up with someone in Life Sciences and 2 math majors, so it was pretty cool to get their perspective and skills when we were tackling questions. 

[ephie-ubc-science]

Do you have any tips with studying for PSYC 314? Should I follow the learning objectives for that too? I find that there is so much info to memorize

I’ve talked about PSYC 314 with David King before.

Learning Objectives are always good but for psych courses they can be a bit vague. A conceptual understanding is really important, so go to office hours or ask the prof if there’s something you need clarification on. Ask questions in class. My suggestions for studying from the textbook: do active studying, not passive. Write out your notes. Make sure you can express them in your own words.

[ephie-ubc-science]

Hey! Would you mind doing a course review for PSYC 314 (King) and CAPS 390 (various)? I'm interested in taking those courses. Thank you! (/◕ヮ◕)/

Yeah, for sure!

PSYC 314 - Health Psychology

Grading: 2 midterms (33.3% each), 1 final (33.3%); option of 3% HSP creditContent: textbook (MC only) + lectures (MC and short answer)

I took this course with David King in a winter session. He’s a pretty great lecturer, first off, and he’s really approachable for course content as well as extracurriculars. He actually says in the first lecture that you can feel free to ask him to be a reference so long as he’s talked to you a bit and knows who you are, which is super nice! He’s also interested in mental health and sustainability, and he also loves his cat Atticus. :) Lectures are a nice mix of his talking and some video clips (e.g. someone who’s at the end-of-life, reflecting) relevant to the course. He puts up pretty detailed lecture slides beforehand so it’s easy to take notes. Basically, I’d definitely recommend him as a professor. (Side note: he also has a blog and he’s pretty awesome. Also, at least 3 guys I know would rate him the hottest prof at UBC. You’re welcome.)

Now for course content, I have to say Health Psyc gets a bit repetitive. I think it’s highly valuable (that’s an understatement) for anyone going into healthcare, and the overall ideas are important even for everyday life. However, once you get further into the course, the ideas tend to repeat and I got a bit bored reading the textbook. Lectures remain pretty interesting but that’s probably more the prof than the material (er, by that I mean both his lecturing and his good looks tbh). This course was on the easier side of the psyc courses I’ve taken. The averages for the two sections were 70 and 72. 

Overall I’d recommend this course if you’re interested in healthcare.

Check this post out for some general psyc study tips and a bit of my PSYC 314 notes.

CAPS 390 - Intro to Microscopic Human Anatomy (Histology)

Grading: online quizzes (5% each for 4), midterm (20%), final (60%)Content: lectures + textbook (they say about 15% is extra from the textbook but tbh IT’S A LIE YOU DON’T NEED THE TEXTBOOK unless you want a good reference.) Take a look at the syllabus.

So CAPS 390 format is pretty weird - you get different profs for each subject pretty much, which is a mixed blessing: the bad profs, you don’t have to spend that much time with, but you also have to get used to each lecturing style immediately. Profs vary a lot in how much info they put in their slides; personally I found embryology/development extremely difficult to study for because the slides were really bad. Luckily, most profs have pretty good notes, organization-wise and content-wise. 

The course is pretty memorization-heavy. The exams are mostly MC, some short answer (fill-in-the-blank for sentences and diagrams, and some actual short answers i.e. answer a question with a sentence), pretty straight-forward stuff. For me personally, I felt pretty overwhelmed when I was studying for the midterm (there’s just so much info), but I did well on the final after cramming for 3 days. So my tip: cram?

The quizzes are open-book, online, and not limited for time (i.e. there’s a deadline but you can have it open for as long as you want before that deadline). I think they discourage working with others, but I think discussion is really valuable, because these questions are harder than exam questions. It’s not hard to get high marks on the quizzes because the majority of the answers you can get straight from the notes. 

This course was mandatory for me, but I think it’s generally quite important if you are planning on doing any lab work, be it volunteer, a summer project, or coop. Microscopy, histology, and cellular functioning put into the context of disease - that’s how I’d describe the course. My friend for example, impressed at his interview for the Vancouver Prostate Center by talking about the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and what happens in cancer - this was exactly what we did in class! I’ve also found it helpful for cell adhesion, both for its implications in larger-scale physiology (gap junctions in the heart) and for research purposes (my thesis, probably). In short: pretty broad coverage, well-designed to make you think of disease relevance, and a good foundation.

[The course coordinator (Roskelley), who also teaches some of the material (basically whatever he can’t find other people to teach?? LOL) is really nice. He answers questions enthusiastically in class and he was really understanding about exam conflicts. I actually had 3 exams just outside the 24-hour window that UBC recognizes and they were right at the beginning of exam season; he offered to everyone that if you have 2+ exams in a 36-hour window, he’d be happy to reschedule the CAPS 390 final. This was a lifesaver!]

[ephie-ubc-science]

Would you recommend PSYC 314: Health Psychology? I've looked at the grades historically and it seems that its rare that people get above 92+ over the last 4 years? Any advice would be helpful- thanks!

Hi, I’d say PSYC 314 is a very important courseto take for anyone who is intending on a career related to healthcare, and probably still interesting if you’re not. The material is pretty relevant to everyday life. I took the course with David King (but I don’t think he’s teaching anymore) and was surprised that I enjoyed it. I found it to be a bit easier than other psyc courses though, and with him we had the 3% bonus for HSP credit.