The first online-test

Sorry for not posting in the last few weeks. I have to do several exams over the next 2 weeks and I am a little stressed. Yesterday I had my first online-test in the course Mental Disorders and I was very excited. Did I spent enough time with the Comer Chapter? What does my supervisor want to know from me? I was so excited that I somehow read the complete Chapter 5 again and during reading I was thinking - I have read this before?! Until I found out I did to much ... and then I was able to focus on the OCD part.
Well it turned out I was prepared! But somehow I got one answer wrong and I don´t know which one so I hope that I will get the information somehow. But to be honest ... that was a time period of 10 minutes for 15 multiple choice questions for a small amount of text/information. 9 pages and they consisted of knowlege about OCD. I am now a little afraid what is going to happen in the final assignment when I am to know everything. So I guess there will be a lot of reading and learning before the test and I hope that I can remember everything. But yet it is still very much fun participating in the course and I am still enjoying it. Specially because the subject has my intrest. And I do have to smile a lot when I think about the diffrent studies psychs have done over the last 100 years. I mean some of them were cruel but some of them were funny as well. I am still thinking about the little boy with the white rat and I am wondering if he was able to overcome his phobia with white fluffy things. I mean seriously - poor boy that is afraid of Santa!

Tasks Tasks Tasks

Today we are going to finish our first group-work with the task 3.1 and the paper we had to write. The cool thing about working with google docs is that we were able to work on the paper simultaneously. And we even used the chat function at Google to talk about the contents of the paper and we gave opposite feedback. We had some challenge with the Referencing because it is the first time we all had to work on the standarts of the Harvard System of Referencing but I hope we made it. During the last week I completely forgot to read Comer chapter 8 that was the task without task for last week. So I will do that today and I will watch the screen lecture.

Task 3.1

I started my task 3.1 today. Well I shouldn´t say my task because it is our first group work in the online-course. I started reading the Comer chapter 4 and this time it only took 2 hours. That was pretty cool but to be honest the reading was a little boring. I mean I already heard about classifications (ICD/DSM) and diagnosis and during the reading I had a strange thought in my mind. Do I really want to know that not every diagnosis is right? Will it become my personal battlefield in later jobs if I question everything? Specially diagnoses of clinicians!? I´ve heard several social workers complaining about the cooperation with doctors and clinicians because they were to theoretic and did not understand the individual or they made up the wrong diagnosis of a mental disorder. For example a guy that was diagnosed with a depression that ended up beeing a borderliner ...

Balance

Wow! Without balance we are nothing ... we are not even we ... we are only I. 

Impressive little movie that I have already seen before in my first semester at the University of Applied Science. But it gets a total diffrent meaning now after knowing a little bit about the systemic approach. I am so curious about the next chat and the discussion we are going to have *yeay*.

I explain the movie as follows: The brain - the plattform - the I - can only be healthy and "normal" if it has a balance. Every part (the humanlike figures on the plattform) reacts to the diffrent actions of the other parts to keep the balance. But as soon as something is wrong (the case) the whole system is disturbted and the balance is lost because every part reacts egoistic and doesn´t care about the balance anymore. The parts lose itself and destroy the system. I define the case as Mental Disorder and the humanlike figures as clear thoughts.

Task 2.1 - finally done!

Well what should I say? I managed to finish the task 2.1 and it was fun! After watching the screen lecture I had so many ideas on how to built my "own" SORC-scheme. Especially because I was lucky to do my internship at a company that consults and works with people who abuse alcohol or drugs. Due to the fact that I did or I tried to consult many clients myself I was amazed who true the SORC really works. I mean working there really made my mind up about long-term consequences and I believe that it is very hard for an addicted to really see or understand that. The short-term consequences are all that matters. So, I hope the tasks go on like this because the first one was fun and kept my mind thinking and working. Later on I will watch "Balance" and do task 2.2. I´ll keep you updated as usual.

Day 10 - time management fails

Well I planned to watch the screen lecture and complete my first task on the last weekend. But my time management was a mess and instead of watching and reading I spent my time doing other things. Today is Wednesday which means that I have to hurry because I have to complete the first weeks task untill Friday. I will keep you updated.

Day 5 - the reading

Due to the fact that I am a little sick I took the chance to start with the task for next week. I read the chapter of Comer and somehow the whole reading took me approx 3 hours. I was a little confused because I thought I could work faster. But I had to get used to the English and so it took more time than I expected. Fortunatly I understood the text pretty good and I did not have to look up any words in my dictionairy. I guess it was also an advantage that I had already read and heard about Carl Rogers and Sigmund Freud. The text itself was interesting and especially the chapter about the Sociocultural Model got my attention. I never thought about cultural barriers while working with people who have a mental disorder. Tomorrow I´m going to watch the screen lecture about "Models of Abnormity" and maybe the movie "Balance".

Day 4 - work still in progress

After experimenting with the Google blog function and Google docs I feel at least a little prepared for the things to come in the online-course. There will be a chat tomorrow afternoon at 4 pm where I will meet the other participants. I´m looking forward to it. And I am curious how the others are doing with the online-course. As far as I could find out the tasks for next week are already online in Moodle so I guess I will start reading on the weekend. Lucky me we have a bank holiday on October the 3rd here in Germany so I guess there will be enough time for the first reading of a scientific english text. There will be a slightly difference between reading something about mental disorders and Harry Potter - that´s for sure.

Day 1 - here I go

Early this morning the participants of the course "Mental Disorders" received their password to enter the world of Moodle (webbased learning platform). I started of watching some video introduction of my supervisor Prof. Dr. Noyon and tried to manage all the "online" stuff. First of all I updated my profil at Moodle. That was very easy.But it was not supposed to go on as easy as it started. Prof. Dr. Noyon mentioned that the blog used at Moodle is not very usefull and he suggested the blog version of Google. I googled "blog google" but I could not find anything helpfull to create my own blog. But - I finally made it - and here I go.

Welcome to my new blog!

Welcome to my blog. I will post several impressions I´m going to make during my first "online"-course at the University of Applied Science in Mannheim. The course is called "Mental Disorders". I will keep you updated during the following weeks.