20% Project Post 5

I worked on my PowerPoint this week. I feel that I gathered enough information in the previous weeks to be able to clearly define what a sports psychologist is to the class. I feel that after my presentation, everyone will know what a sports psychologist is and how he or she can help impact the lives of athletes. I worked out the basic layout of my presentation. The first thing I am going to do is introduce my topic and give a brief description of what a sports psychologist is. After a brief description, I plan on going into detail about the different types of sports psychologists. At this point I will clearly describe what each does, and what it takes to become one. The next thing I plan on doing is telling the class which career path interests me the most. I will give different examples or scenarios in which a sports psychologist is needed or could potentially help an athlete or team that is struggling.

School is another important factor to this career. I will then talk about which schools offer graduate programs in sports psychology and explain why it is better to actually be on campus instead of an online program. The last part of the presentation will be me telling why I think this will be a great career choice for me. I will also talk about the different career choices that comes along with being a sports psychologist.

20% Project Post 4

This week, I began to work on my presentation for the class. I felt like I gathered enough in formation to have a good start. I still needed to gather more information about how people perceive sports psychologists or if they even know what a sports psychologist does. I asked a few of my teammates if they knew what a sports psychologist was and what they do. A couple people said that they are just like a regular psychologist but the work more with sports. They are right to a certain extent because sports psychologist do mostly work with sports, but it depends on what level of education the psychologist has that determines if he/she is capable of dealing with normal problems that psychologists deal with.

            I explained what a sports psychologist is and how they could potentially help an athlete or coach. After explaining what a sports psychologist was, I asked if they felt like seeing one could help an individual or team become better. All the answers were pretty much the same. Most of them agreed that a sports psychologist could potentially help a team become better if the players actually listen to what they are saying. A couple of people felt that it could be a good idea, but it could also be something else that people could use as an excuse when things go bad or that the tactics that the sports psychologist uses is just some pointless thing to waste their time. Gathering information was helpful to me because it allowed me to see how others may view someone that is trying to help them become better from a mental standpoint.

Teaching the Class

jordan and i presented our topic to the class today. we introduced our lesson which was 4th grade history. they watched a video on the first amendment and we briefly discussed what each of the rights that we went through meant. the final thing they did was to look up and example of someone using a first amendment right in history or the present.

20% Project Post 3

This week I mainly did research on my topic. I found that the field is growing today because of the amount of youth that are becoming athletes is going up. Parents, coaches, athletes themselves or people who exercise regularly are all curious about how to become better or help someone else become better or mentally stronger in order to perform better. There have been a lot of athletes in the media in the past few years that have done things to give to help give them a competitive edge in their respected sport. Sports psychology is essentially the same thing and it’s legal.  It may not give a person a huge body or make them run faster or physically outperform their competition, but it will help give them an intellectual or mental edge when dealing with certain situations or pressure.

            Helping individual athletes reach their peak performance is only one perk of the job. The help that I would be able to provide one athlete could be something that helps the whole team. There are things such as communication skills, team cohesion, game preparation and listening skills that I could work with a few athletes from a certain team and help the whole team. These leadership qualities could help an individual propel themselves into a leadership role on their team, and the others may pick up on these qualities and become a better team all together. The thought that I could potentially help someone with becoming a leader of a team or help put them in a position to become great at their sport is motivation for me to keep perusing sports psychology as a career.

20% Project Post 2

This week was interesting and very helpful in doing research for my project. I was given the chance to actually speak with a sports psychologist, Ariel Treankler, this week.  During our meeting, we talked about the different routes that I could take with a sports psychology degree. I could go one of two ways, which are a masters degree or a doctors degree. If I were to get only a masters degree, I would be limited to working with athletes and helping them with their performance on the field. With the doctorate degree, I would be able to do the same as a masters degree, but I would also be able to help individuals that have mental disabilities or other disorders. The doctorate degree would make me more of a clinical psychologist.

            I believe that I would like to attain a masters degree in sports psychology. I feel that helping individuals with their performance problems is my favorite aspect about becoming a sports psychologist. Helping young athletes is always something that I wanted to do, and I feel like this would be great for me. I also brought up the point about possibly becoming a coach during my meeting. Ms. Treankler told me that be a coach that also has a degree in sports psychology is a really good thing. It would make me more employable because I understand how to deal with athletes and bring the best out of them. I enjoyed my meeting this week, and I am looking forward to learning more about my future career plans.

Teaching Project (9/24)

Jordan and I finished our presi. We talked about how we want our presentation to go and how we planned to incorporate the class to be active. Our plan is to show a video about the first amendment followed by a brief explanation of what each freedom discussed in the first amendment does. After we discuss the freedoms, the class will be asked to find a past example of the first amendment and a present example. We will then briefly discuss these examples and see if anyone has used or witnessed these freedoms on UGA campus.

20% Project Post 1

I already knew a little about sports psychology because it is a career that I want to pursue after school. One thing that I learned from research is that sports psychology is a relatively new field of psychology. Dr. Carl Diem founded the first sports psychology lad in Berlin in the 1920’s. With this being a new area of study, there is not a lot of people that know what sports psychologists do or what it takes to be a sports psychologist. To be a sports psychologist, a person would actually need to have a background in psychology as well as kinesiology. The mind is only one part to being a sports psychologist, but in order to good at what you do it is useful to know how the body functions and how different things can effect the body. I also realized that being an athlete would help with understanding how to help other athletes that I would be fortunate to work with in the future because I know some of the things that they have to deal with. I would be able to understand both sides of the session with a client.  There are numerous things that could affect an athlete’s ability to perform at their highest ability. There are also a lot of athletes in the world today from high school to the professional level. All of these athletes want to perform the very best that they can and would be looking for help in improving their performance if it is available to them. I feel like sports psychology is a great field to get into because it is new and there are people that are going to need them to improve their performance in their own sport.