Excelling Psychology

I, Jyotika Varmani, tutor students of Psychology at all levels. I reside in Mumbai and tutor students online. You can contact me personally on my e-mail id jyotikapsychology@gmail.com or call/message me on 9892507784 for enquiries. --- In this new series of posts, I discuss the necessity of routine health care, dispel some common myths about the nature of mental health and suggest a few measures, easily incorporated into everyday life for this end. In this first post of the series, I discuss why a preventive approach towards mental health care is an absolute must. --- The nature of depression and its treatment have become topics of popular concern since depression is today taken to be one of the leading causes of death. A lot of suggestions have emerged from mental health experts on how depression, in its initial phases, can be tackled by measures such as sharing problems with friends, adopting problem-solving strategies, taking professional consultation and counseling, etc., all of...

I, Jyotika Varmani, tutor students of Psychology at all levels. I reside in Mumbai and tutor students online. You can contact me personally on my e-mail id jyotikapsychology@gmail.com or call/message me on 9892507784 for enquiries. --- Year after year, assessments of AS and A psychology papers reveal this one striking issue - students fail to identify the independent variable in novel research stimuli presented to them. Expectedly, this inability is further reflected in their failure to correctly formulate an independent variable in the answer which requires them to design a study of their own. Since the ability to identify the independent variable is so fundamental to the AS and A levels, in the present post, I present you with a detailed but easy, illustrated conceptual understanding of the same; followed by a few exercises for you to sharpen your skills: What is an independent variable? Let's begin with what a variable is. A variable is anything that changes from time to time...

Psychology is a science and not an art. It fascinates me when students debate over how they can make their report more 'attractive.'This is a very poor objective, for the essence of a good report is its communicative ability and not the creativity of the report writer.  Try an exercise of empathy here. Imagine you are a researcher who has decided to investigate the impact of regular smoking on female adolescents. Now, as a first step in your research, you will look at past studies done in this area, to find out how much is already known, and gauge what is still desired to be known. Suppose you find fifty relevant, published articles on this topic.Now imagine these were all written in different formats, and every writer had decided for him/herself how much to report and how much to omit. You find that some reports cover fifty pages of narratives including the writer's own opinions and struggles with the topic; while others complete the entire report in two paragraphs...

Year after year, there is an incredible fear of statistics from students across Universities. I would expect students to be excited for the subject, for it is such a relief from theory, and is very 'scoring.' On the contrary, students wish it were one subject they did not have to deal with. Why do students fear statistics? There are two answers to this. The first is that it's fear has been hyped beyond measure through the years, and students are not particularly known to pause and think about the rationality of what goes around. The second is that professors fail to teach statistics on two counts - they are unable to present solutions in a clear, step-by-step manner and they are unable to make students see the importance of statistics in the field of Psychology. I remember one of my professors coming into the class and laughing about the fact that she barely knew anything about statistics. She would then open a statistics book every lecture and dictate whatever was w...

Students often complain of lacking the discipline needed to study from afar. They present a pathetic picture of themselves - the poor, helpless souls who are at a complete loss if not dealt with a rigid hand from the outside. Students who need to complain this way need to remember that there are a large number of fellow students who complete correspondence courses successfully, acquire knowledge at par with those studying in the classroom, and utilize this knowledge to make a successful career. Common Complains of Studying from a Distance Some of the common complains of those pursuing independent courses, including competitive ones like the SET/NET/GRE are: they have no idea where to begin and how to continue they have no idea how much time to devote to each topic they don't know which learning methods to adopt they get bored and distracted easily, since the external environment of study is generally the home - they end up procrastinating they lack time, especially if...