Day in the life of a Psychology student

Find out what a typical day looks like for Megat Danish Isharuddin, a student studying psychology at BCU. 

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Before starting the course, familiarise yourself with key concepts like cognitive and developmental psychology to ease your transition and build a consistent study routine and focus on analysing research, interpreting results and essay writing as you’re graded on mainly clear evidence-based assignments 

Getting ready 

Fortunately for me, my university is just a ten-minute walk away, this is very convenient for those early morning lectures. I’m usually up by 8.15 so I have time to look presentable, sort out my matcha, and grab something to eat. It’s a Monday, which means I have lectures for my Qualitative Research and Neuropsychology module and a seminar.  

After I’ve sorted out my bag, I grab my keys and head out the door to begin my journey to university.  

Lectures 

Today’s neuropsychology lecture was about Perceptual Decision Making. It was interesting how different brain imaging techniques are used to study and observe how decisions are made. I was particularly impressed on how our prior beliefs bias perceptual decisions.  

I decided to catch up on a bit of reading in the library as I had an hour before my next lecture. I chose to read up on the recommended post-lecture reading from my Cultural Psychology lecture last week.  

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Afternoon seminar 

It’s just midday and at this point I’m already a bit tired- so obviously I need a coffee become functional again. With my two morning lectures done and out the way, I head to my final session of the day.  

This was a seminar for my Qualitative Research module, it’s a two-hour session with lots of thinking and discussion. In these seminars we practice and learn how to use SPSS, which is a statistical software that’s vital and constantly referred to in our course. As much as I (and many others) despise statistics and implementing it, it’s unavoidable. 

Unwinding

I usually reach home in the evening at 5-6pm, because although my sessions end way before that- I still like to take a short walk to pop into the city centre after my last session to window shop or treat myself to a boba.  

I think it’s super important to practice mindfulness and wellbeing occasionally as a way to de-stress and keep yourself grounded during these hectic times. Every evening, I practice interventions like journaling, as I’ve found this to be an effective way to de-clutter my mind when I visually write and recap events from the day.    

I end the day with a burrito bowl to my side, Modern Family playing on the projector, and my laptop on my lap as I work toward my upcoming deadline for my Cultural Psychology essay of “Perceptions and Experiences of ‘Singlehood’ across cultures”. 

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