The Standard Deviants

Hi All, Luana here again. As we are coming towards the end of this internship, I thought I would reflect on the experience as a whole. I can definitely say that this internship has been completely unique to any other learning experience I have had at university so far. It was great to be really hands on and self- directed with my own learning. Even the more formal-learning aspects during the workshops and coding classes were skills that we could apply immediately in our projects. Sometimes at Uni we get a lot of theory thrown at us without being given an opportunity to apply it ourselves, so I can say I really enjoyed the ‘learn by doing’ approach to this internship. I gained so many new skills in these past four months, just by being able to try things myself. It is also amazing how different everyone who does the internship’s experience is. As we have all worked in different areas, with different supervisors and on entirely different projects, everyone’s experien

Hey all, Justin here and I will be reflecting on my thoughts on the presentation part of the internship. During the few weeks prior, I have come to realise the importance of communication and being adaptable. After submitting our proposals, a big relief has set in ways knowing that we have knocked down successfully a big part of the internship. During the writing process, it was a good opportunity in translating our experiences into a formal and tangible report. With the past week having made a start on our presentation for our projects in the lab, we now have to try convey our experiences and passion to an audience that isn't all too familiar with our project, using 5 slides and under 10 minutes. Same idea, completely different format. Faced with these challenges, I have come to appreciate the skill of being able to communicate and adapt to different audiences with different forms. To me, it seems like a skill that can be easily overlooked during psychology course work study w

Hi all, Mikayla here again to give you all an update on my internship experience so far! I cannot believe how close to the end we are! With proposals due next week, the pressure is definitely on. I find myself getting more and more nervous for the presentation which is also fast approaching. This is definitely a very tricky part of the semester where everything is all due at once for me, so balancing everything has proved to be incredibly difficult so far! One thing for sure though, I could not be enjoying my forensic lab experience anymore than I have been! In particular my lab carries out research surrounding face perception and recognition. I never really considered how we perceive and recognise people in every day life, but now that I have, its hard not to see it everywhere! At the beginning of semester I began the internship by preparing face stimuli for the study I was running. After what felt like a really big achievement back then, it was time to finally begin

Hello everyone, It's Elizabeth again, this time to give an update at 8 week mark. I think we all deserve a pat on the back for marking it to the 2 month mark of this internship (and uni in general). Draft proposals were submitted a few weeks ago and peer review was released last night. That means it's time to begin the process of editing. Going back a couple of weeks ago when we submitted our draft, I felt a huge relief. I knew it was far from perfect and I was definitely missing bits and pieces since I was still unsure of my experiment. But I thought hey at least the most stressful part of writing is over and now all that needs to be done is editing which can't be too bad ..... can it? There's always a spelling or grammar mistake hiding somewhere. A couple of days after submitting my proposal, we made a couple of changes to my experiment so I had to rewrite a few things in my rationale and method. So after three days of not touching or even thinking of my pr

Hello Everyone, Luana here, checking in at Week 7, meaning we are officially into the second half of the semester!! This internship has moved very quickly, and I can't believe we are already this far. Last week our Draft Proposals were due, and I remember thinking that the hardest part, physically getting the words onto paper, was finished....... I think I may have been wrong.  Now that we are at the process of peer review I am realising that having someone analyse my work is both a little bit terrifying and exciting. Terrifying because obviously it is hard to hear something negative about your own work, especially when it is a part of a project that you have been working on for 6 weeks and feel attached to (I am feeling major empathy for academics who have much more investment in a topic). Exciting because I am hoping that having new minds review my writing will be a great way to highlight how it could be better, in ways that I never would have thought of. I think a

Hi everyone, Alex here, I thought I’d share my experience of the many woes and wonders of working with children. One of the main reasons I came from the U.K. to Sydney this year, aside from the vastly more pleasant weather, was it gave me the opportunity to work in a developmental psychology laboratory. During my second year of my undergraduate degree back in Cardiff I took an introduction to developmental psychology course, and it was probably the course I enjoyed most throughout the year. Learning about how children develop gave me an entirely new appreciation for just how amazing it is that they gather so much knowledge and so many skills in such a short space of time. Thus, I decided that I wanted to spend my placement year (as part of degree I had the opportunity to spend a year working in an institution related to psychology) working in a developmental psychology laboratory. Thankfully, I secured a placement here at UNSW working in the Early Learning Lab, under Jenny’s

Hi all! This is Mikayla here, and I’m going to be sharing my experiences with programming/python so far! Walking into the computer lab on the first week I had absolutely no idea  what to expect. With zero coding experience up my sleeve, I was determined to give it a go. I remember that feeling of relief as everyone in the class introduced themselves pointing out their lack of experience and thinking we were all on a similar page. That was until pretty quickly in the lesson I started feeling very lost and when I looked around the room it seemed like everyone was following along quite easily. I remember that overwhelming wave of stress and uncertainty as I left the lab, wondering what exactly I had gotten myself into this semester. The next couple of classes after that consisted of following lesson plans (which were structured incredibly well!) and trying to find my feet in this new and mysterious world of coding. There was certainly a lot of staring blankly at th