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.