My Passion For Psychology : Psychology

My passion for psychology started since I was in middle school; I have been surprised on many psychology theories and how captivating psychology would help to explain human behaviors. Therefore, I have begun my desire to concentrate on researching about psychology, specified in the cognitive neuroscience area, particularly on human memory and languages.

As a transfer junior attending the University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign, I am more than excited to seek for and to be a part of the research team. All the classes I had in my previous college, which is Green River College, a two-year college located in Washington, are non-research based classes, and there were no research opportunities available for students; therefore, I cannot stand to let myself blend into research coursework at the University of Illinois. I found the Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program, and I believe this would be an excellent opportunity for me to start building my research experiences at the University. By looking through the graduate mentors’ descriptions, I am amazed by all the works they have made. All of them are fascinating and intriguing to me. Nevertheless, I am drawn to these three topics the most; they consecutively are Rekha Balachandran’s, Kim Drager’s and Aseel Addawood’s.

With the mentor Rekha Balachandran, her research project is astonishing to me due to the concentration on circadian rhythm. As my background in psychology and biology, I have acknowledged that circadian rhythm is known to play a significant role in human physiological wellness. Disruption in circadian rhythm could affect metabolism poorly with the involvement of eating disorder as well as difficulties in storing information in short-term memory; improper functioni...

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...e fluently without conscious thought on grammatical perspective, whereas comparing to second or third language, this happens without people’s awareness. Besides, I thrive to know to what extend people’s long-term memory can sustain with information; how false memory are generated; does it interfere with either biographical information or cultural backgrounds? To explore the answers to these questions, I aim to pursue a Ph. D. in Cognitive Neuroscience; hence, attending graduate school is a significant step for me to my professional fields. With the Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program, I believe not only can I strengthen my research skills but also optimize my graduate school preparation for the following academic year. Furthermore, by working with a mentor, who is a current graduate student, would also support my perspectives in higher education’s experiences.