Since I'm assuming that most of you have not partaken in the blessing (and sometimes curse) of being a grad school counseling student, I thought I would share a typical activity that one sometimes finds themselves participating in, of course, under the guise of "learning."
One of the classes I'm taking this semester is called "Psych Appraisal" which is basically on all the personality, vocational, learning, psychological, neuropsychological, etc tests that are out there for people to take to learn more about themselves. The beauty of it is that at our level very few of us will ever be qualified enough to administer these tests. Plus the class is at 8am. You're getting the picture of what this is like.
Fortunately, my teacher is pretty darn cool. He tells us all these crazy stories from years of being in private practice and working in mental hospitals. Nobody can tell interesting stories about their careers like psychologists. Well, maybe my brother's career gets a close second. Anyway, recently my teacher brought in a bunch of the Rorschach Inkblots to show us how they work. Despite what you see on TV these things actually can predict personality pathology and have a real scoring system and everything. So he would show us blot after blot on the overhead, while we shouted out what we thought the pictures were. I think we were hoping somehow hoping to be confirmed that we weren't crazy. Or that we were.
Anyway it went like this.
Teacher puts Inkblot example on overhead.
Students yell:
"Bat"
"Cat"
"Ghost"
"Gerbil"
Teacher says:
"normal"
"normal"
"normal"
"probably normal. wait, did you see one gerbils or two? Two? That means narcissism. You must be really self-focused. Hahahaha..just kidding."
Another time he gave us a memory test by having us copy a complicated drawing from the overhead, then he turned the overhead off and made us copy it again. Then 30 min later after moving on and doing other class material he randomly told us to copy it again.
It really helps your ego a lot.
2 comments:
Sounds interesting, Jess. I've always wondered about those tests, and maybe the next time I see you, you could administer one. Hmm... :)
Please tell me you were the one who said "gerbil"! Not because of the potential narcissism but because that's the coolest answer!!
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