Course Review: Soci290, Soci287, Psyc395, Psyc 356.
After each term l've posted a review of the courses I took, I know we all find reviews helpful when figuring out what to take next. (I can link previous course reviews in the comments)
For context, I am a single mom of 3 kids (3,8,9) , funded so courses were completed in 4 months.
Also in the middle of year 2 of the 4year Psych Ba.
This term was SOCI 290, SOCI 287, PSYC 395, PSYC
356.
PSYC 395- Forensic Psychology
Final Grade- A
This course is comprised of 12 Quizzes that are only worth 7% each. Quizzes are extremely easy. Mostly based directly on textbook vocab. Terms are usually in Bold. However sometimes the quizzes will throw in random questions to throw you off.
The Tutor for this course didn't like my final paper.
But there were no parameters given for what to write about. The tutor just said - write it on anything in the course. So I felt lost right off the bat. He gave me a 68% so clearly wasn't what he was looking for.
Course content was fairly interesting, not overly interesting but not boring either. I took a month to complete this course. But theoretically it could be done in less time. I would consider it an easy course but it does take a little bit of effort.
SOCI 287 - Into. To Sociology
Final Grade - B-
Of all the courses l've taken so far, this one was by far one of the most frustrating. I thought sociology just wasn't my thing. I was telling everyone how much I hated sociology as a concept.
Every assignment I was getting between 50% and 70%. There is a lot of emphasis in the course materials to not just regurgitate the textbook in your journal entries. So mine were personal and I related the course key terms to my life experiences. Apparently what they asked for is not what my tutor wanted to read. Evidently I did way better on the assignments where all I did was restate key terms- which is exactly what we were told not to do.
Soci 290 - Social Problems
Final Grade - A+
Thankfully I was already enrolled in this course and couldn’t drop it. Soci 287 had me never wanting to take another sociology course ever again.
I wouldn’t say this is an easy A course but it’s definitely not hard. Kinda like psyc 478.
The info I learned in Soci 287 really came in handy here and finally I saw the grades I felt I deserved. Course content was very repetitive of 287 but I enjoyed that one of the assignments didn’t require citations, or only citations from the text book.
A lot of the assignments were pass/fail so therefore an automatic 100% for a pass.
Psyc 356- Intro to Personality
Final Grade - B+
I was literally 1% short of an A- for this course.
Again another tutor that did not like my writing unfortunately. Maybe I was shit this term lol.
This course was A LOT. Typically I try to do 1 course per month and this one took literally all 4 months for me. That said, I took a lot of notes and yes the quizzes are open book but the notes really came in handy.
On the 5 quizzes I did fairly well, losing marks usually because of the long answers. Each quiz has 3-4 long answers worth 5 marks each. So I’d lose one or two here and there which added up.
Otherwise did great on the multiple choice sections.
This course threw a curveball. If you’re familiar with the Avengers franchise you might see the 2 essays on it as fun. For me I was like “gahhhhhhhh whyyyyy?”. Not knowing the characters well enough and not being able to watch the full movie without getting hella bored… ended up costing me marks for those 3 assignments. (2 essays and 1 conclusion assignment)
The final was weird too. Again open book and they provided a full 24hours to complete it. I went in not worried at all. And the weirdest part were questions about where specific theorists were born. For example it asked if one was born in Alberta. But the textbook only named the city. If you’re not from Alberta you had to google to find that. - or at least I did.