So I was sitting in my “Controversies in Clinical Psychology” class tonight (literally 10 minutes ago) and the professor is talking about this paper that we will need to do.  It is a literature review and he is going on about what a literature review is and how we need to have it in APA format and things like this (I’ll spare you the details).  Towards the end of this, he starts talking about how the paper is mandated by the Psychology department because it is a 400-level class (specifically PSYC493-C) and that all 400-level classes are suppose to be capstone classes.

So I sit in my seat and think “what exactly is a capstone class?  I know I’ve heard it before and that it is always talked about in such a positive light, what what have I gotten myself into?”  So I came back to my room and looked it up and I thought I’d share.  This is from the Psychology department as to the instructions for all 400-level classes in psychology:

“In order to provide majors with a ‘capstone’ course experience which builds upon earlier coursework, the
Psychology Department has defined 400-level courses as follows: “to provide students with skills and ability to
understand an area of psychology in depth. Class size ideally no larger than 25. To include substantial reading
and analysis of primary source material. Written work, advanced analytical work, and/or other advanced creative
experience to comprise a significant (>30%) proportion of course grade.”

So in other words, I will be synthesizing knowledge from previous classes as I talk about Alien Abduction Experiences…This should be interesting.  No, but all joking aside, I think this is really awesome that I get to participate in this type of class and tell future employers and graduate school that I completed a course like this.  Unfortunately though if they ask any questions about it though, I have to talk about how I tried to prove aliens exist…While my teacher is very open to it and thinks of it as a legitimate concern in psychology, other people might not take so kindly to it…so I guess I just hope they don’t ask what my capstone paper and presentation were about.

This also made me wonder though why there were no capstone classes required in my Biochemistry major.  Not that I really want to do even more exhausting work with Biochemistry, but I’m sure it would pay off for others as much as I think this one will pay off for me in Psychology.  Oh well, I guess I should just count myself lucky that one of my two majors (and the one I plan to focus on) has this experience for me!