do you ever feel...

[chaos]

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that you won't be able to cut it in grad school? I'm finding it difficult enough to keep up with my undergraduate classes...I honestly don't understand how some people can take 5+ classes at once. I've had to limit myself to 2-3 at a time (which may hurt me when I go to apply to grad school, but it's better than failing a class). I'm taking behavioral neuroscience now and I feel like I have to read the material loads of times before I actually remember anything, and I seem to forget everything the instant the test on the material is over. This is not good, considering I want to go into neuropsych or clinical where I will need to use this information every day. Sometimes I wonder if I'm actually intelligent enough to become a psychologist.

 

[Logic Prevails]

I'm taking behavioral neuroscience now and I feel like I have to read the material loads of times before I actually remember anything, and I seem to forget everything the instant the test on the material is over. This is not good, considering I want to go into neuropsych or clinical where I will need to use this information every day. Sometimes I wonder if I'm actually intelligent enough to become a psychologist.

Couple things to keep in mind:

1) Stressing over things is not going to help your situation. Are you frequently worrying about whether the material will stick? - Chill out. Anxiety breeds stupidity (i.e. you won't be able to remember much).

2) Most people forget things material; especially if it is not used... but it is also somewhere in your brain in a form that will make it easier to remember/learn again, so don't sweat it.

3) What do you mean by not being intelligent enough to make it? Do you mean your memory isn't up to par? - lots of people find crutches for some of this stuff... or otherwise just have to work harder.

Try to chill out some. Stressing will only make things worse.

 

[PsiKo]

There is a learning curve that takes place. No doubt, over time you will become more adept in the art of being a student and almost by instinct dial in the amount of effort required for each course. Courses tend to look more intimidating on a syllabus than they actually turn out to be.

As for taking 5+ courses per semester: I agree, it's a lot and part of the above learning curve is being able to anticipate (from experience) and manage the stress involved. Surprisingly, graduate courses are not necessarily more difficult than undergraduate-level courses. For sure, graduate courses delve more deeply, but they're focus is more centered and there's a lot of repetition from one course to the next to the point where you'll find that you're able to recycle previous work (which is entirely ethical, assuming it's your work).

Lastly, not every graduate program insists that its students attend full-time. And at some schools, full-time = 9+ credits. (I think that 9 credits is considered full-time in the stipulations of most student loans.) Course load requirements is a detail you should investigate if you truly believe that you can't manage at least 12 credits per term.

 

[ElektraComplex]

Surprisingly, graduate courses are not necessarily more difficult than undergraduate-level courses. For sure, graduate courses delve more deeply, but they're focus is more centered and there's a lot of repetition from one course to the next to the point where you'll find that you're able to recycle previous work (which is entirely ethical, assuming it's your work).

This has not been my particular experience with grad classes. I didn't see much repetition from one course to the other, though there were definitely relationships that could be drawn. Making these connections between subjects required effort on the part of the students, however, and often involved analyzing a problem on multiple levels. Recycling papers would be nearly impossible, though one could write on the same general topic.

I agree, though, that grad classes aren't necessarily harder than undergrad classes. It feels a bit like comparing apples to oranges, however. Grad classes tend to require more reading of primary sources and more critical thinking. Rote memorization, you may be happy to know, chaos, was not at all a large part of my graduate experience. It was more about being able to synthesize ideas and digest and critique theories. Anyway, like others have said, I wouldn't stress over it now. You will most likely spend more time on your graduate courses, but the change in how they are generally run may be right up your alley.

 

[bigmood]

I've felt the same way (incompetent) almost every day...ha, no, not that bad.

I think the good thing about grad school (or at least from my limited perspective) is that there is a distinction between competency and capability. I mean, we could all try to memorize the exact formula for ANOVA or whatever, or (and preferably, for me, anyway) we could learn how to execute and interpret the procedure using software. Ya know?

 

[psy86]

...there's a lot of repetition from one course to the next to the point where you'll find that you're able to recycle previous work (which is entirely ethical, assuming it's your work).

Although I am not interested in hijaking this thread, I feel compelled to point out that recycling previous work may not be entirely ethical, depending on your personal sense of responsibility as well as the explicit rules of your institution regarding this behavior. Many universities expressly forbid recycling of course papers. Try googling "plagiarizing your own work" or something similar for examples of this. PsiKo makes it sound as if it is a given that this is acceptable, but this is certainly not always the case.

 

[50960]

Why would someone not be allowed to use quotes, ideas or prose of their own work for additional coursework?? If this were the case, we would all have been doomed after undergrad. 👎

 

[joetro]

I'm not yet in grad school so take this with a grain of salt, but I've always heard that it's smart in grad school to focus your writing. So if you are taking random class A, maybe it makes sense to make your big paper about your topic of interest some how ... you could then re-work it for a publication, but you wouldn't be wasting all of that time on a paper that is on some far out topic that doesn't relate to your publication record. And of course, if you end up doing a lot of writing about one area, it makes sense that you would build on previous work. So of course you wouldn't be copying huge chunks of an already published paper to another published paper, but you'd be citing some common works, talking about a method section in a similar way as a previous article if it's the same study, etc. You don't have to totally start from scratch every time, is how I understand it.