Class taken: PSYCHOLOGY 152

The material of the class is pretty interesting, and I enjoyed most of the readings. The grading is fair, although you do have to study to get an A. She didn't offer any extra credit for my quarter. Your grade is based on 10% attendance (via the iClicker questions), 25% papers (1 page response to an activity you do in class, really easy, you will do about 5 of these), and 65% tests (30% midterm and 35% final). I didn't really like Prof. Bower's lecturing style, but it is doable and the material is enjoyable.

I took Psych 152 Mind-Body Interactions and Health. If that class title sounds very vague to you, it did also for me when I enrolled in it. Basically the class is broken into two halves. The first half of the class talks about how stress affects our health and how stress is related to certain diseases (Cardiovascular Disease, HIV/AIDS, Cancer). The second half of the class focuses on how different things we do with our bodies affect our physical health and psychological health. We talked about how exercise, yoga, tachi, and other activities improve your psychological health and consequently physical health.

The class is graded on three things. Six writing assignments worth 30% of your grade. A midterm and final both 35%. The writing assignments basically worked like this: if you did them you got full points. So everyone pretty much got all the points for that 30%. Exams weren't too bad. They were very slide heavy--you got tested from mostly from what was on the slides. You can probably get away with a decent grade w/o reading the assigned textbook, but "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" is a very easy read and pretty enjoyable textbook at that. So you should read it! Not too had to get an A in this class.

Julienne Bower is an AWESOME professor. I took her class, "Mind-Body Interactions and Health" (Psych 152) and found it to be life changing. The grading is very fair and it is not difficult to get an "A." Just make sure you know the meta-analyses results when taking the exams (that's what the majority of the class missed). Lots of extra credit on the final exam too!!