Psy 301-CSULB

Choosing the Major (from the University of Albany Psi Chi chapter)

The general rule for success in any endeavor is to find something you like to do, and then pursue it with vigor and persistence. This certainly applies to undergraduate life at a University center. Choosing Psychology as a major, you may have reasons that have little or nothing to do with liking Psychology. For example, it may seem to be an "easy" major -- undemanding and allowing lots of time for "fun." If so, we think you may be wrong on two counts: 1) many students find the Psychology major to be far from easy and 2) much of the "fun" of undergraduate life is in the intellectual stimulation of learning, discovering and enlightenment. We believe that to obtain the best educational experience during your undergraduate years, you should take an active part in planning and choosing your courses. That means choosing courses that broaden your knowledge, deepen your understanding, expand your capacities, sharpen your skills, and maybe even inspire and delight you. Professors and courses vary in their ability to do these things and it is your task to find out which ones will most likely enrich your life here. Talk to upperclassmen, graduate students, faculty advisors, department chairpersons, students and advisors in honor societies (such as Psi Chi!) and the like, to become informed about your choices.

Of course, things will not always work out as hoped, but at least you will be actively engaged in directing your education rather than passively and aimlessly following a path with no clear goal.

This is a large University with big classes and lots of students. It's easy to get lost in the crowd! You are best off rising above the faceless masses as soon as you can. Of course, there will be those huge classes in the popular survey courses, where the professor looks about 10" tall from the back of the lecture center classroom and the tests consist of 10 pages of multiple choice questions. But remember, every professor has office hours, and usually loves to talk about the subject matter in the course. If you can find something of genuine interest about the courses to talk about with the professors, do so. Let them know you exist, have an engaged mind, and care about the lectures and your grasp of the material. Eventually you will be able to choose from among a list of courses in which the class size is less than 30 and you can have genuine classroom discussions with the professor. There are many courses available now that have writing assignments. This is excellent preparation for your future professional life, where writing is always a valued skill. Especially in your senior year, you can choose courses that aim at a high degree of specialized and advanced knowledge about a topic, and often are taught as seminars with an intense level of student participation. This is the graduate school norm of learning.