{"id":807,"date":"2015-02-19T13:00:04","date_gmt":"2015-02-19T21:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernjournal\/?p=807"},"modified":"2015-02-19T13:02:47","modified_gmt":"2015-02-19T21:02:47","slug":"portraits-of-a-university-self-proclaimed-psychology-nerd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/portraits-of-a-university-self-proclaimed-psychology-nerd\/","title":{"rendered":"Portraits of a University: Self-proclaimed psychology nerd"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"PHOTO<\/a>
PHOTO BY NATHANIEL DUNAWAY | ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Nathaniel Dunaway meets with Western students to discuss their lives and their experiences in the world of higher education. In doing so, he hopes to find an answer to the question what does it mean to be a college student in the 21st century?<\/pre>\n
I\u2019m from Southern California and I wanted to move to Oregon. It was between Oregon and Arizona, and Arizona was too hot. But I was ready to move out of my parents\u2019 house, and I came up here to look at OSU.<\/p>\n
At the airport, my mom said she\u2019d heard about this school called Western Oregon University. So she said \u201cLet\u2019s just drive by and see if you like it.\u201d So we drove by and I took a tour, and I liked it 10 times better than OSU. I liked the small classrooms.<\/p>\n
I like teachers to know who I am. I liked the feel of the campus a lot more. I applied that night at the airport while our flight was delayed.<\/p>\n
People are a lot nicer here than they are in Southern California. I use my grocery store example: if you\u2019re at the grocery store in Oregon, you can have a full-on conversation with someone you don\u2019t even know over what type of milk you\u2019re buying.<\/p>\n
In California, if I were to even start saying something like \u201coh, those milk prices\u201d or whatever, someone would just stare at me like \u201cwhy are you talking to me?\u201d It\u2019s fast-paced where I come from. People don\u2019t really take the time to engage with other people. Everyone\u2019s kind of in their
\nown bubble.<\/p>\n
I remember the first time I drove up into Oregon and I got out of the car to pump my own gas, and the guy freaked out on me. But now I go back home and I\u2019ll just sit in the car like \u201chello, it\u2019s been like 10 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
I started classes fall 2013. I took the general, entry-level psychology classes, and those were the only textbooks where I could actually sit and read them front to back, and stay engaged.<\/p>\n
When I sat down to decide my major, I just weighed the pros and cons of what I enjoyed reading and
\ndoing. So I picked psychology. Now I know almost my entire department by name, and I like that. When I graduate, I\u2019m gonna be sad to leave, but I think I\u2019ll be ready to move on.<\/p>\n
The thing about going to college is that it\u2019s become the new high school diploma. A bachelor\u2019s degree wasn\u2019t what it was 20 years ago. You\u2019re not going to go out and find a high-paying job right away. It\u2019s just not gonna happen. So you have to further your education. I have to. There\u2019s
\nnothing I can do with a psychology bachelor\u2019s. So I\u2019ll get my master\u2019s in psychology, then my Ph.D., and I\u2019m going back to California for that.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m such a psychology nerd. Psychology, for me, was just relatable. I think that\u2019s really important. Everything I\u2019m learning is relatable. With each class, I\u2019m liking it more and
\nmore. And it\u2019s great that I can use what I know to help my friends and family, and hopefully later on I\u2019ll be able to help people I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m not losing my steam for psychology. I love it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Psychology major and social science minor, Selena
\nLockamy, discusses the differences between Oregon
\nand California, her love for psychology, and the necessity
\nof furthering her education.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":828,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-life"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}