most interesting psychology seminar I've ever had

Just came back from the most interesting psych seminar I've ever attended. Had to blog about it immediately when I came back.

I love psychology. I love being able to share psychology stuff with my classmates. Given that I am a highly extroverted and neurotic person, which means I have a low level of arousal and I need to be highly excited about stuff constantly (something which I have learnt in this unit), I cant just stand reading a book and absorb it all by myself. I love to share my thoughts with other people, and being able to hear about others' perceptions, espically on social, developmental and abnormal psychology issues. It ticks me to know about why others behave the way they do.

I came across this very interesting point that my seminar leader pointed out. He asked," research has shown that monozygotic (identical) twins that are reared apart have similiar characters than monozygotic twins that grows up together. Do you know why?" I was perplexed. Its a good point. Shouldnt twins who grow up together be exposed to the same environment, hence both genetics and environment plays a part in shaping the twins' personality? My classmate then pointed out that there is a need for a twin to establish its own identity when reared together. Yeah, that's right, I thought? Which twin would want to live on his/her twin's shadow? Oh, arent you 's twin? You both are out-going, can play fantastic football etc etc?

The seminar went on interestingly. We were learning about evolutionary theory and how it affects our personality. When my classmate was mentioning about the mating behaviour of males and females and that guys have sex with numerous partners because of the need to ensure that they are able to produce offsprings with genetic makeups similar to theirs while women look for that one guy in order to ensure stability, I blatanly pointed out that my friend once mentioned to me that guys have numerous sperms and they want to give as all out as possible, hence looking for numerous partners to release as much sperms as possible, while women only have one egg, hence they would do their best to hold it and therefore look for only that one guy to fertilise their egg.

The discussion went on which got more and more interesting. My seminar leader could even tell us that the shape of a man's penis could actually determine the personality that we have (haha, I shall not post it on my blog due to parental advisory, but no worries, you can always ask me about it :P) the whole class got more and more excited. Then we got carried away and went on to talk about the types of contraceptives and how it screws up a woman's menstrual cycle, my classmate, who was presenting on the topic became really excited and began to actively discuss his sex life with us. Damn, can you imagine being excited with a presentation to a class? Something that you are really interested in? Man, it got me attentive for one seminar of my life.

Given that I was going to blog about my mid "double-degree" life crisis, I really began to appreciate doing psychology, or choosing to do personality psychology as one of my topic for a research unit. I was lamenting to a friend of mine that doing a double degree got really hard, and that I cant find anyone that is doing the same double degree that I have (who in the right mind would want to do psychology, accounting and finance when they are not even related?) which leads to a high chance of not knowing anyone in the unit that I am doing now given that most of my friends have already done that unit. There goes the headache of not being able to find a friend for an assignment partner, and another problem, which is to work in a whole group of aussies. It can get really nerve wrecking at times, with differential cultures of doing things, to put it in simple terms. There are many times which I wish I hadnt done it, but after today, I thought, hey! I've got a chance that many people dont have. Why not embrace what I have now and rise up to the challenge? Double degree means uni work gets doubly hard, so why not accept the challenge? I might find that I'll come across learning new things, making more progress which I think others will not have. And graduate having double more knowledge, being doubly more work- smart (I hope) and having double more exposure to different fields in life. Doing psychology definitely keeps me sane in doing my double degree. Well, at least more interesting than whether the directors of a company can lawfully reject a share transfer (Who cares? At least I dont..) and what kind of good accounting information system can a company have (Yiks, I hate AIS).

Oh yeah, and as of today, I finally found one person to do the AIS assignment. And guess what? She's also doing the same double degree that I'm doing (psychology, accounting, finance). Woo hoo! Phew, I'm not the only weird person doing it...