Psychology 101

[Patrick D'Arcy]

Patrick D'Arcy walked into his classroom. Placing the flat of his hand on the desk, he waited while Snoop balanced her way down his arm and then scampered over to her box-bed that was always on his desk. The corners of the man's lips curved as he watched the rat burrow her way into the middle of the nest of material. Patrick then turned his attention to getting the classroom ready for his students' arrival. Checking his watch, he saw that he still had a good fifteen minutes until the current class let out.

Walking over to the white board, he wrote in large letter across the top

Emotions

Under that he wrote:

Emotion can be defined as a conscious experience that includes a state of (physiological) arousal and a mediating interpretation. As such it is assumed to emphasize two factors: (a) some degree of arousal and (b) an attempt by the experiencing organism to label the experience. Nonetheless, emotion is still a very complex phenomenon to study. Indeed, the two most widespread research strategies have been (a) attempts to label the dimensions of emotion and (b)
theoretical attempts to integrate physiological and cognitive factors.

He had sent a message to each of the students and asked them to bring in five to ten newspaper and magazine photos of people faces, and these he would use in the class.

Walking back to his desk, he pulled out some large poster board handouts that he would give each of his students. The paper was drawn up into a seven by seven square grid. The squares in the figure should be labeled with numbers. Along one axis, label seven positions that range from pleasant to unpleasant; along the other, label seven positions from acceptance to rejection. He had also, prepared additional strips of poster board material labeled sleep-tension in lettering similar to that used in the poster. The extra strip of poster board should also have seven numbered positions and be large enough to cover the labels of the other dimensions.

The Graph:

[Cara-Jean Kitchi]

Cara walked out of the physics lab and headed through the throng of students toward the psychology classroom. She still battled with herself on why she was taking the highschool course when she already had her BA(psych), but none of the other electives had appealed to her - not even art - and she needed to choose one, so psychology was it. The information about her BA was only between herself and the owner of the academy.

Squeezing her way out of the swarm of students heading to their own classes, she paused to take a breath before pushing open the door to the psychology room. She bowed her head respectfully toward the teacher before she took her seat. She enjoyed this class as it wasn't anywhere near as busy as her other classes and there were only enough tables for what there were students - and a couple of extras - making the room look big and not crowded.

Sitting down, she began to set her table up. Once she had everything she needed out on the desk, looking just the way she liked it, she opened the zipped binder that she had for list class and revealed the photos that she was asked to bring. They hadn't been given any clue as to what the photos were to be for, but they ranged in emotions, from a bride on her wedding day to the photo of a small girl at her father's funeral.

She then pulled the poster board out from under the folder and looked at it, it then wasn't hard to work out what they would be using the photos for. She finally turned her attention to the board and held back an involuntary shudder. She had enjoyed the semester they had done on dreams. Emotions however? They scared her.

[Becca Walsh]

Making her way to her Psychology class, Becca pressed her lips together tightly, not quite sure why she was so uneasy about going to today's class. She'd been notified that she should bring pictures of people cut out from magazine or newspaper articles, and naturally, she'd had a difficult time with it. She'd ended up choosing a wide range of six people, figuring that she'd be able to cover the bases with those for whatever they'd be using them for. The other reason the class made her feel odd was how little students there were. There were much fewer students than there usually were in her classes, and it was much, much more personal.

She wasn't particularly surprised to see that Cara had gotten there before her, and took a seat at one of the tables, setting her bag beside her and only pulling out her notebook and the pictures she'd been told to bring. Rapping her fingers against the desk, she avoided eye contact with the other people in the room. SHe wasn't usually like this, but today she was antsier than normal, and the fact that she didn't know why scared her.

[Patrick D'Arcy]

Students:
Cara-Jean Kitchi,
Becca Walsh,
@savannah

Patrick watched as his three (Starboard, just post as though Savvy arrived before class actually started) students entered, each in their own way. It was slightly amusing that his class consisted of three females, and each with completely different personalities.

Once the girls were settled at their tables, which were probably about twice the length of a normal classroom table. He liked the bigger tables though because this way his students didn't have to have their things cramped into a small square that wasn't made to balance the amount of things some teachers required their students to use in one lesson.

Leaving Snoop where she was, sleeping in her material nest, he walked to the front of the room. "Good morning, ladies." He greeted warmly. "As you will have read on the board, we are going to spend the next month, or so, looking at emotions." He gave a small smile, as emotions weren't exactly something that these girls weren't very forthcoming with. "You will see a poster board with a grid on it on your table. I would like you to sort out the picture you brought with you on the grid depending on where you think they should be, the one closest to the left bottom, you will write a number one on the back and the rest follow suit." He stepped back toward his desk. "I will be here if you need any help. If you have any questions, feel free to speak up."

He walked back to his desk and paused before sitting down, look over his students. "Before you begin. Even though we have finished looking at dream analysis, who here is still keeping their dream journal?"

[Cara-Jean Kitchi]

Cara noted the arrival of the other two students, but didn't raise her eyes from her table as they found their seats.

She lifted her slightly as Mr D'Arcy addressed the class and began to explain how everything would work. Cara took down careful notes - after her meeting with the woman in the principal's office, she made extra care now to write notes during class - even though she didn't need them - and kept track of everything she had read as well. She hadn't liked the accusation of her grades only being what they are because she cheated and plagiarised other people's work.

She closed her notebook, tucking it away neatly under her chair, before she spread out the clipping she had brought along to class with her. She then concentrated on the poster-board, a small frown marring her flawless features. However, the teacher's voice caught her attention before she could begin sorting them out. She pressed her lips together and slowly raised her hand into the air.

Keeping the dream journal had become something that she had just grown used to filling in, and it was also a good way for her to keep track of how much sleep she actually allowed her body to have.

Her attention then went back to the photos. She began to sort them out from the most emotion to the less. She then began to space them out over the graph. She didn't number them until she was content with where they were supposed to go, which, surprisingly, took three attempts. She then picked the pictures up one at a time and began to number the back of them and replaced it on the graph. The photo with the little girl at her father's military funeral was placed at unpleasant and acceptance.

[Deleted]

Savannah listened to Mr. D'Arcy speak and looked at her stack of head shots she'd clipped out of the magazines she'd bought at the store earlier that week and paper clipped together. The assignment made much more sense now that she wasn't just sitting at her desk with a pile of faces. She reached her hand out to pick up the first picture when he spoke again. She glanced around quickly at the other two girls, wondering if they were keeping their dream journals. She'd never actually had one, so maybe it was time she started to write in one... unless he was about to tell them to stop writing in it... then she wouldn't have to bother. Savannah just slept, she didn't like to remember what her mind was rambling on about while she did it. Cara-Jean, of course, was still keeping her notebook. Did that girl even have a life? She seemed more like a drone than a living, breathing, human being. Savannah rolled her eyes subtly after she'd already looked back down at the pictures on her desk, not wanting to feel the wrath of Mr. D'Arcy if she had not bothered to look down before disrespecting another classmate, especially in such a small group.

She took the stack of faces in her hands, laying them each out across her desk, in no order what so ever. As she placed them on the table in front of her, she memorized each face, pinning them with a memory of hers from everything up until that moment. She could name a specific person and time in which she'd seen every one of those emotions, and in a way, she was afraid of that. Then she reminded herself that it was all a part of life. People get angry, people get upset, even depressed, and yes, people could be happy. Maybe that was the part that disgusted her the most... happiness. Shudder. She glanced at the poster board again and then started to number each of her photos with the spot in which they would fit on the board. Elise in square one. Thomas square two. And so on, so forth.

[Becca Walsh]

Becca pulled the poster board closer to look at as she waited for the class to begin, but looked up when Mr. D'Arcy brought the class to order. Her thoughts were already straying to where she would place the pictures on the board, but she forced herself to listen to all of the instructions rather than letting her mind carry her too far away. She doubted that she would have any questions about it, but it was nice knowing that he was open to them asking. Too many teachers in her past had snapped at her for asking questions that had seemed too "obvious" to them. Perhaps Becca just over-thought things, but she didn't think they were silly at all.

When he asked about the dream journal, Becca raised her hand, but not up all the way. She didn't really want to be asked about it. The dream journal assignment had been an interesting experience for her, and she didn't really want to talk about it or find out what the results meant. Usually she didn't remember her dreams, and usually the only time she did was if it was a nightmare. The nightmares stayed with her for a long time though, and though none were reoccuring, she didn't really have any trouble remembering the basics of them. Her dream journal had only made her think of them more, and it was now just filled with frightful figments of her imagination.

Trying to get her mind off of the journal, she immediately set to work setting the pictures out on the chart, actually putting quite a lot of thought into how she placed them.

[Patrick D'Arcy]

Students:
Cara-Jean Kitchi,
Becca Walsh,
@savannah
You can either leave the posting order as it is now,
or you can post Becca after Cara, Cymilla.

Patrick nodded his head when both Cara and Becca raised their hands tentatively in the air, trying not to be noticed. "You joined our class after our section dream analysis finished, Savannah." He said. "And no, I don't expect you to start one. One more question for the two dream journalists; are you still analysing your dreams after you write them down?" He just wanted to know if they were still using what they had learned to try and fully understand their dreams or if they were now just following a pattern they had started. "I'll now leave you to your work."

He sat down at his desk and tickled Snoop under her chin as she climbed out of her bed and scurried up to him. He smiled as the rat walked up his arm and nuzzled against his neck, chittering away in his ear.

As the time passed, he finally rose to his feet and threaded his way around the three occupied tables and had a look at how the young ladies were doing with their work. He was very impressed with how they were going and it didn't seem that anyone was struggling with the project.

He walked back to the front of the room. "A couple of questions while you are still working. Is there evidence that these two scales measure the same thing? And if not, what is worse, rejection or unpleasantness?"

[Cara-Jean Kitchi]

Cara was hoping that the topic of the dream journals would end as quickly as it was brought up, but cringed when the teacher asked if they were still working through analysing them. She kept her head down but have a clear nod in response to the question. Her dreams weren't the normal figments of the imagination. Instead, her dreams were a retelling of the past in vivid detail. I was night-time that seemed to give her memory the right to take flight and haunt her. However, even if her dreams were old memories, she still analysed each one, trying to work out why a certain memory surfaced when it did.

Her complete energy was being poured into her work that she jumped when a shadow fell over her table, and bit down on her lower lip when she worked out that it was just the teacher walking around to look at their work. The one thing she liked about the psychology teacher was that he never interfered with their work, allowing them the chance to see where they had gone wrong - if they had - and only ever gave a tiny prompt of his students had completely fallen off course.

As the question was asked, Cara chewed on her lip as she thought about it. "Yes and no." She replied. "Yes, they can equal each other at times, but, nine times out of ten, rejection is the opposite of unpleasantness." She looked at her own graph and nodded. Her last picture was as opposite ends of the scale, because the death of a loved one was. It was unpleasant, but you didn't feel as though the person that had dies had rejected you, so you accepted the fact that their life was over.

[Becca Walsh]

Becca's hopes that Mr. D'Arcy would look over her raised hand in response to the dream journal question were shattered when he followed up with another question. Realizing that she probably wouldn't get out of it since it was such a small class, she sucked it up and spoke up, head tilted just slightly to the side. "I usually analyze them a bit, but often I prefer not to delve too far into it anymore." She gave a ghost of a chuckle before her smile trailed off as she thought about her more recent dreams. They were ridiculous, yet they never failed to terrify her, causing her to wake up twisted in her sheets.

Happy to continue with her charting of emotions, she shifted the pictures around on the poster board as she reconsidered many of them. The assignment had seemed simple enough, but as usual, she just kept thinking about each placement and changed it. It was frustrating, especially since she knew she would never be completely happy with how she left things.

Mr. D'Arcy's question brought her out of her work, and she listened to Cara's answer in interest before answering herself. "I understand what Cara is saying," she started, "and I quite agree. Rejection and unpleasantness are very different, but I think that they often do come together. Of course this isn't all the time, but they are sort of associated with each other. If they aren't the same, which is debatable, and I'm hesitant to answer fully, I'd say that rejection might be worse. It's one thing to have to deal with unpleasantness, but rejection is another thing altogether."

She finished, clenching her teeth together as she realized how much she'd said without meaning to. She could have gone on, delving into why rejection was worse, but she was very glad that she had stopped herself.

[Deleted]

Savannah nodded at the man's words and continued to number the pictures she had on the desk. Each emotion that she saw brought another memory out of her head, but she chose to ignore them, not wanting to get distracted. She tended to do that quite often, so whatever she usually did whatever it took to stay on task, especially during a class. 

She barely registered the words being spoken by both of the other girls, just letting them go in one ear and out the other. It wasn't like she cared about their dream journals, so why would she waste time and energy listening to them ramble on about them? She looked at one picture in particular, matching the emotion, which was distraught, with one of the memories she had buried deep in her mind a while ago. She sighed softly and wrote the correct number on the back, and then placed it carefully on the poster board where it matched up. 

The teacher's next question was answered by Cara, and then Becca. As Savannah listened to the two girls express their thoughts on his question, she observed, listening intently to see what each girl had to say. "I think you're both right about them being connected, but rejection, like Becca said, is something that can be interlaced with unpleasantness or an independent feeling. Someone may have been hoping for something new, something good, and have been rejected or turned away. That's when they can be found together. On the contrary, someone may have just been going out on a limb, or simply wishing for something good to happen to them, and when the exact opposite happens, they know that they've failed, been laughed at, been made a fool of." She said to the pathetic excuse for a class, it was more like a group. "In retrospect, maybe they are the same thing, it's just the way of reaching the emotion that is different." She said to them before returning to her pictures as she started to glue to edges down on the board.

[Patrick D'Arcy]

Patrick listened as each of the students voiced their opinions on the matter and nodded. He was actually quite surprised to get answers from any of them let along all three. "I like your logic." He commented, as he did like the logic behind all of their reasons. "So, in some ways they are the both sides of the same coin and in other circumstances they aren't?"

He let the girls continue with their work as he checked the clock. "Time flies when you're busy." He commented. "That is us for the week, ladies. I will see you back here same time and same place." He stepped over to his desk and flipped open his date book. "Homework. Next week we will look at the Neuroscience of Emotion. Can you please write a brief description of a situation that had made you feel very angry or fearful. Don't panic, you won't be showing them to anyone - including me - I will explain more next class." He smiled toward the girls. "I will see you next week." He sat down at his desk, as he didn't like to start packing up until his students had left, as this way it didn't seem that he was in a hurry to leave if they had any questions about the work, either from the class or the homework.

[Cara-Jean Kitchi]

Cara listened to what Becca and Savannah had to say on top of what she had offered. She nodded her head in agreement with both of the others as what they had said also made perfect sense.

She finished attaching her pictures to her grid and arched her eyebrows when Mr D'Arcy said that class was over, she couldn't believe that she had been sitting there for an entire hour just working on that project, it felt like she had only just walked into the room and sat down.

As the teacher spoke again, she picked up her binder and opened it up to the homework section and wrote down what he had said. She held her breath, and the slowly released it when he said that what they wrote down wouldn't be shown to anyone. She clenched her fists to stop her hands from shaking and told herself to pull it together. She couldn't think of too many situations that made her angry, but she knew plenty had had frozen her to the bone with fear. Just because she didn't display an emotion didn't mean she didn't feel it.

Closing the binder, she put her pens away and put everything back into her satchel. She was pleased that this was the last academic class for the day as she would need to take the poster board back to her dorm to keep it safe, and she didn't think that she would have had the time to do that if she'd had to hurry off to another class.

She rose to her feet and bowed her head toward the teacher. "Thank you, Sir." She said before she waited a heartbeat and left the room.

[Becca Walsh]

Becca listened to what Savannah said, focusing as much as she could. She was a little bit distracted by her own thoughts, but they were broken up when Mr. D'Arcy proclaimed that their class was over. Had it really been an hour? It seemed impossible, especially since her classes usually seemed to drag on and on.

She wasn't really bothered by the fact that they had homework, and really, it was to be expected. She pulled out her planner and opened it to the date, writing it neatly in the Psychology row. Her planner was the once place where everything was neat and organized for her, and she intended to keep it that way. The thought of the assignment put her on edge a little bit, since the emotions she would have to write about would be very raw. She arched an eyebrow high when he said that nobody would see what they wrote, a little doubtful. She's always been skeptical when teachers gave them assignments or made then keep journals but promised not to look in them. It probably wasn't right, but she did anyways.

This time however, she made herself promise that she would take his word for it and write about an experience that actually made her angry or scared. She already knew what that would be, and it was probably time to face it. Perhaps what they did for their next class would help sort it out. She doubted it, but maybe. Wasn't that the whole reason she was taking this class? Sighing shallowly so that only she could hear, she said goodbye to her teacher and left, bringing her poster board back to her dorm with her.