Hello all! Today I will be sharing how I made it through Developmental Psychology. I will admit this class was rough, for some reason I struggle to stay attentive during Psychology courses, but I managed to do very well!

What did you bring to lecture with you?

• Class binder with printed PowerPoints
• Yellow highlighter (to highlight vocab)
• Black pen

How did you prepare for lecture?

Read. Read. Read. You guys Developmental Psychology consists of a lot of reading! I feel like Psych classes in general do, but this reading was unlike Anatomy and Patho. I think that may have been of a personal problem though, because is not my favorite subject. Anyways… I would MAKE SURE to complete the assigned readings. Mind you, I may not have read all four chapters, but I would make sure to read at least 2 (because I knew we would get through two chapters during the lecture). I would then finish up the other two to be prepared for the next lecture. When reading, I made sure to take notes and skim over them before class began.

How did you take notes during lecture?

We were provided Powerpoints slides so I printed out 4 per page and took notes on those. I would use the yellow highlighter to highlight any vocabulary.

How did you prepare for exams?

Studying for exams for this class, took a little while to get used to, because our professor told us to “know everything”. We had no study guides, just the Powerpoints and our textbook. I went to office hours often which helped me master the class and this is the advice I gathered:

• The goal is to see the material 3 times (before lecture, during lecture and after the lecture).
  1. Read before lecture
  2. Pay attention during lecture (don’t scroll through the Internet or your phone)
  3. Study the material within 24 hours after lecture, so when it is time to study for the actual exam it feels like a review.

This method helped me so much and I really believe it helped me learn. I plan on using this method in nursing school (if possible).

• Make your own study guide/review sheet if you don’t have one. I would do this by combining (typing) my lecture note highlights and key points from the textbook. I would make sure to type out all age ranges because they always came back to haunt me. If you are going into Developmental Psych study and know your age ranges and theories! Please! Once you understand the different theories you will understand the content better.
• Learn, do not memorize. I can write a whole new blog post on this if anyone would like, but my professor said this so, so many times.

Overall, my experience went better than I expected. I had heard horror stories from other students and read terrible ratings on RateMyProfessor, but I just put in the work and thank God it came back to me!

Have you taken Developmental Psych? What is your advice for others?