I’m going to disagree with many of my peers and say something maybe a little crazy — I think psychology majors have it too easy, at least at our University.

Many fellow psychology students may disagree as many psych classes involve heavy memorization, and sleep deprived engineering students may be wondering what I’m complaining about.

But let me make it clear, as a psychology major, I find the subject fascinating, relevant and important.

Almost everyone, including myself, is intrigued by the inner workings of human behavior and thinking.

Understandably so, it is one of the most popular majors in the country, in fact, according to University of West Florida Professor Jane Halonen, it’s one of the top three choices in the nation.

However, as psychology is considered to be a scientific study of human behavior and thinking, I believe all students could benefit from a more rigorous psychology curriculum. The required curriculum should be expanded to include more classes that incorporate scientific understanding and not just a lot of memorization. Psychology is a science and the curriculum requirements should further reflect that.

With that in mind, one option could be offering more challenging courses for psychology students would help put psychology on par with other science-related programs.

In many ways, the rare moment when all that hard work in a challenging course actually amounts to an A is extremely rewarding. As I’ve said before, an A in a class that required critical application of concepts is more valuable than an A earned from memorization.  

And although it is simple to learn many terms from memorization, if there isn’t consistent analysis of the material, it won’t be processed in the long term.

To break it down, all psych majors at the University have a curriculum with core classes they must complete. There’s one introductory class, one statistics class, two biological or cognitive classes, two miscellaneous ones, one lab class and 12 advanced hours.

There is a lot of flexibility in the major, which is beneficial to many people, but I feel the flexibility also can lead to students being inadequately challenged.

I’m not saying there aren’t difficult classes in psychology, but unlike other science-related majors, it is easy to bypass most of them.

Amanda Youssef, a junior in molecular and cellular biology, says a class required for the major — MCB 354, Biochemistry, is one of the most challenging classes she’s taken.

MCB 354 is just one of many required difficult classes in the curriculum. Unlike psychology, MCB doesn’t have as much flexibility and thus students are forced to take the challenging courses. Although psychology and MCB are two different types of sciences, both fields require more critical application of material that comes along with more than just memorization. So it would make sense for the psychology curriculum to mirror some aspects of other science majors, such as requiring more challenging courses.

The biological/cognitive, miscellaneous and lab category all offer at least six psychology classes a student can choose from to complete the requirement of two.  

And although the toughest classes within the Psychology curriculum are in the biological and cognitive category, but for me only one was stressful.

PSYC 210, behavioral neuroscience, was a pretty stressful class for me. It combined the science of psychology with the unfamiliar science of biology. Even some MCB majors in the class struggled with material that should have been familiar to them because of their major.

However, I enjoyed it. And although I was just points away from receiving an A in the end, I wouldn’t have taken back all the time I put into it.  

The grade I got was worth it because the challenge of the class gave my academic career worth. In a sense, there is a certain amount of respect that comes with getting through a class that is generally considered difficult by the student body. It’s an experience that boosts your self-esteem and can further motivate you to succeed. 

It’s more valuable to work through college knowing you challenged yourself rather than just sliding by. 

My PSYC 462 class, How Children Think, understands the importance of this fact. The class is structured in a way that integrates research articles into the curriculum and forces students to read them by having weekly quizzes based on the reading.

All my psychology classes have taught us experiments and their results, but this is the first class I’ve had that made us read and understand dense research material and then apply it through quizzes and tests.

Psychology is a strong field that integrates statistics and scientific research. Our University’s psychology curriculum has potential to be much more rewarding to students if it required them to take the more challenging courses, or by making all the class choices more difficult.

Sehar is a junior in LAS. She can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @Nimatod.