To briefly reintroduce myself, my name is Gracie Blinkoff. I live in Long Island, New York, but I attend Oberlin College in Ohio. I took Affective Neuroscience in Stockholm last session, and I’m taking Lifespan Psychology this session (also in Stockholm). I decided to spend another four weeks here simply because: more time abroad and more abroad experiences. My recent philosophy is that novelty, in whatever form, is inherently valuable. I also didn’t think that three weeks would be enough time to make me feel decently situated. I wanted to return home and be able to say, “I spent most of my summer in Sweden.”
Next session, I’m looking forward to the new social dynamic and making some more spontaneous connections, although I miss everyone from Session 2 too much already. Just from observing a little on the first day of class, I predict good things for this Session 3 group.
I decided to take Lifespan Psychology, since I’m a fan of contextualizing the complex brain in terms of the people we interact with every day. I thought taking one neuroscience course (more molecular) and one psychology class (more people-oriented) would reveal more of the “whole story.” I’m interested to see the overlap between the two courses in terms of learning about the development of the brain and disorders. I’m eager to learn about the “concept of the self,” “individual trajectory of the self,” and to study the Scandinavian environment through a psychosocial lens. Most of all, I’m incredibly curious about this “crowd-rising” event our class has to stage. I’m sure I’ll be writing about that later on. Speaking of future blogs, my Study Tour is in Zurich, which I am hyped for.
In this coming session, I’m hoping to round-off my knowledge of the brain, run the entire perimeter of my island, and again, get my entire Lifespan Psychology class hooked on making friendship bracelets. Woo!
