Instructions

Signature Assignment

In this final Signature Assignment, you will reflect upon your personal progress as a new graduate student in Psychology.

This week, your assignment will consist of two parts that can be submitted as one document: You will reflect upon the feedback your instructor has provided as well as review your personal progress and career interests as a new graduate student. This assignment will guide you in your overall academic integrity and prepare you for your work in courses in the program. It may also help guide you to develop specific interests within the field of psychology and influence your future capstone focus.

Part 1

For the first portion of your Signature Assignment, you will reflect on your progress as a graduate student in psychology. This is a self-assessment reflection, and may be based on your work and feedback in this course.

Assess your understanding of course concepts by focusing on the following areas:

• Your vision and professional aspirations.
• The effectiveness of your personal time management.
• Your level of information literacy/research skills.
• Your ability to make logical, persuasive arguments about course and discipline concepts and ideas. In other words, focus on your ability to apply critical thinking skills.
• Your consistency and comfort in applying proper APA formatting.
• Your ability to use effective communications.
• The level and consistency of your professionalism.
• What are three of your most valuable strengths as a graduate student that will help you to succeed in your program? Discuss the evidence that you have to indicate that you possess these strengths.
• What are the three most important areas you need to strengthen as a graduate student? Discuss the evidence that you have to indicate that you need to strengthen these three areas.
• What challenges will you face strengthening these areas? Consider your personal setting and circumstances and how you think they will evolve over the next 2 years.
• What strategies can you use to overcome these challenges? You may want to consider forming a support group, adjusting your circumstances as much as you are able, developing a schedule, and so on. Reviewing each activity will help you to identify the strategies that will be the most valuable to you.

Length: 7-10 pages

Part 2

For the second portion of this final assignment, you will imagine what you might do for your capstone project. While this is still a bit ahead, this task will approach fast and having a good idea of where you are headed with your education will be beneficial as you move through this program. For this portion of the assignment, you will write a paper on a topic of interest to you in psychology.

In this paper, you may utilize the resources that were in previous assignments for this course. You will also need to include 10 additional resources for the paper, five of which should be from peer-reviewed journals. These additional resources may include additional resources you found for other assignments in this course.

In this paper, you should:

• Use references to discuss the theories you are most interested in.
• Discuss ideas and areas you would like to study further.
• Include preliminary plans on how you will go about developing your interest area and determine which challenges you may have with this work.
• Provide a bibliography of at least 10 resources related to your areas of interest.

Length: 3-5 pages

You will compile both parts into one document, which you will then submit to your instructor for review.