Thoughts of a Psychology Student

**This is a blog post of two halves... the first half I wrote whilst slightly inebriated after a night out last week. The second half I wrote this evening AKA not  slightly inebriated... ** Part 1: So it's definitely 2.43am on Saturday morning, and I've definitely just got back from a night out at freshers week and no less than an hour ago I was definitely dancing with The Hoosiers. You're probably wondering why I'm not stuffing my face with kebab or forgetting to take my makeup off, but this blog post has been a long time coming. All week in fact. Lets start from the beginning. I enjoy having a few drinks. I like that it's a sociable activity, I enjoy unwinding at the end of a week with drinks and friends. And freshers week is a great opportunity to socialise with people and have a few beverages... But the extent of alcohol I have witnessed so far this week has got me thinking. The extremes of the UK's drinking culture is bizarre.  Li...

Dear Theresa May, In the current political, social and economic climate, the promise to build a country that works for everyone is a welcome one, and you are having to contend with a history of Tory decisions that has meant that in too many circumstances, our country only works for the wealthy and elite.  However, in light of your new education reforms that involve lifting the ban on grammar schools, you will forgive me for merely lumping you in with your predecessors as you implement regressive reforms under the disguise of 'improving social mobility'. I know you intend to put measures in place to encourage more children from families with low socioeconomic status (SES) to apply to grammar schools, but I'm afraid the barriers for these children go deeper than you might think, and your approach is exclusive and damaging. A quota that works on the basis of lowering the pass grade for lower income families would be ineffective. Amongst children who ach...

As the British weather worsens and the daylight evenings begin to get shorter, we all have to start facing the fact that the summer holidays are coming to a close. For many, this means returning to school for another year of maths, science, english and detentions. For others, this marks the start of a new chapter: university. University has a shed load of pre-conceptions surrounding it. For some, university conjures up project-x style images of frat parties and those red beer pong cups that seem to serve no purpose but to reassure everyone else that you have the correct social status to even be at that party... For others, university seems to emit pure despair; textbooks as thick as rugby players thighs, research papers as dense as the Magna Carta, and lectures so dull even Hermione would fall asleep in them. When I was at school, the thought of not going to university never occurred to me. For me, university was the default option. Both my parents have English degrees; my older...

Having completed the first 2 years of our degrees, the majority of students in the same year as me will either have started, or be soon to start their placement years in industry. Whilst I've been working a 9-5 job on campus all summer until I start my placement in October, my housemates and friends have already started their placements. It's a strange transition from campus to the world of work. Office dynamics are weird, corporate habits take hold and suddenly you find yourself knee deep in excel spreadsheets and responsibility. I was on the phone to my friend the other day, and she was telling me about her experience of placement so far, and we got talking about what it's like to be a woman in the workplace. In the news just this week, was a headline that suggested 50% of females have experienced sexual harassment in their jobs at least once. And I'm sorry to say that this didn't surprise me at all. However it does bring up the very real issue of gend...

If there's two things I'm passionate about, its Education and trying to combat poverty. So when the Psychology department at Bath emailed its students about a 'Psychology in the Pub' talk entitled 'The Educational Binds of Poverty' I didn't really have an excuse not to go... Ceri Brown, a lecturer in the department of education at the University of Bath gave the talk, which was based on the content of her latest book:  ‘Educational Binds of Poverty: The lives of school children’. The talk was fantastic and insightful, and did a brilliant job of demonstrating the intimate relationship between poverty and educational achievement, and how they directly effect eachother. The first section of the talk highlighted how the government and current policy adopt a punitive approach to truancy, and often blame the parents for supposedly allowing school absence, and for the child's apparent lack of aspiration. The government's introduction of fines for ...

Okay so this blog post moves away from politics and social justice, and more towards literature and philosophy. I hope that's okay. If it's not, then come back next time for more political shenanigans.  I've decided to write a blog post about a book I recently read. The book in question is called "On The Other Side" by Carrie Hope Fletcher. Carrie is a Youtuber who I've watched for a few years now, and like me, is particularly partial to a good book and a cup of tea. So when I found out she was writing her own fiction novel, I decided to pre-order it. The first half of this post will be musings about the book and the second half will be a kind of review. Musings I was captured the most by the premise of this book. The protagonist Evie Snow, who died at the ripe old age of 82, finds herself in Heaven's 'waiting room'. Evie finds that she can't enter Heaven because her soul is too heavy. The idea is that throughout ones life,...

The refugee crisis has always bothered me. The thought of families fleeing their homes for their own safety, the journey across the sea deemed safer than the land, upsets me - as it would any other ordinary human being. And I've even blogged about it before >> (http://thoughtsofapsychologystudent.blogspot.com/2015/09/how-dare-they.html ).  But if I'm honest, it's only been over the past week that I've begun to realise the scale of upheaval and atrocity that these people have experienced, and the sorrow that I feel for them has been made that much more tangible through the genuine realisation that they are just like us. Bloggers, and activists, and human rights advocates have been screaming it from the rooftops for months. They are just like us. I knew it in theory, but after visiting 2 exhibitions, 1 event and reading a book about refugees over the past week (see list below), I feel compelled to write this post. Book: Human Cargo : A Journey Among Re...