PS499 Unit 10 Capstone Reflection Example

What I Can Do Now That I Could Not Do Four Years Ago: A PS499 Unit 10 Capstone Reflection

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

PS499: Bachelor's Capstone in Psychology

Unit 10 Capstone Reflection

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The writer, her hospital and her crew are composite; the guidelines and studies cited are real.

Where This Started

Four years ago, at two in the morning, I stood in a closet doorway watching a coworker struggle to breathe and had no idea what to say. I enrolled in the psychology program that month. This term, I finished a capstone that proposes a randomized study of awe walks to reduce stress among the night housekeepers I lead at a hospital in Lansing, Michigan. Looking back, the distance between those two moments is the best measure of what the degree did.

I judge my own work here against the five goals the APA sets for psychology majors, which run from what a graduate knows to how they think, act, communicate and grow (American Psychological Association, 2016).

Knowledge Base

I can now explain stress in more than one way: as a bodily response, as an appraisal, as a product of work conditions and culture. My history and perspectives paper traced the topic from James and Selye to the science of awe, and I could see how each perspective predicted something different about my crew. Still, my knowledge is broad rather than deep. I know a little about many areas and a lot about none, which is appropriate for a bachelor's degree but is also a reason to keep learning.

Scientific Inquiry and Critical Thinking

This is where I grew most. Four years ago, I would have read a headline that awe reduces stress and believed it. This term, I noticed that the awe walk study I admired was conducted with older adults, that walking itself reduces rumination, and that a fair test of my idea needed a comparison walk on the same route. I designed a study whose size I could defend honestly: big enough to estimate an effect, too small to prove one.

The most important thing the degree taught me was to ask what else could explain a result before believing it.

Ethical and Social Responsibility

My ethics paper forced me to see myself the way my crew might. As their supervisor, I could not ask them to join my study without pressure, however kindly I meant it. Working through a framework for ethical research led me to take recruitment, walk leading and data out of my own hands (Emanuel et al., 2000). The diversity discussion led to another change, after coworkers told me that their awe comes from choirs and emergency teams as well as skies. Keltner and Haidt (2003) described awe as a response to vastness, and I learned that vastness looks different to different people.

Communication

I can now write a literature review that synthesizes rather than summarizes, which took three drafts and a frustrated instructor to learn. I presented my proposal to the hospital's nursing research committee, my first presentation to people with doctorates, and answered their questions about statistical power without panicking. I still write too long, and my slide drafts always start with too many words.

Professional Development

My career plan names a next step, a research coordinator role, and a decision point for graduate school in two years. The plan exists because the capstone showed me what I enjoy: designing studies and turning them into something useful at work.

What I Still Lack

The skill I most need is statistics. I can describe the analysis my study needs, but I could not run it alone, and I relied on my faculty supervisor to check my reasoning about power. If I become a research coordinator, I will take a statistics course in my first year.

A Moment That Showed the Change

Last month, at the end of a hard night, one of my crew sat down on the floor of the break room and said she could not stand up. Four years ago I would have frozen in the doorway. This time I sat down beside her, asked what she needed, waited, and walked with her to the top of the parking ramp, where the sun was coming up over the river. We did not talk much. On the way down, she said, "That helped." It was not a study. But I knew why it might have, and I knew how to find out.

Conclusion

Measured against the APA's goals, my degree gave me a working knowledge of psychology, a habit of critical thinking I did not have before, an ethical sense sharpened by my own role and the ability to communicate research to people who matter to me. It also made plain where my training still falls short. The capstone turned the question I could not answer in a supply closet into one I know how to study.

References

American Psychological Association. (2016). Guidelines for the undergraduate psychology major: Version 2.0. American Psychologist, 71(2), 102-111. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037562

Emanuel, E. J., Wendler, D., & Grady, C. (2000). What makes clinical research ethical? JAMA, 283(20), 2701-2711. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.283.20.2701

Keltner, D., & Haidt, J. (2003). Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Cognition and Emotion, 17(2), 297-314. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930302297