For sophomore Disha Sriram and the rest of the newly-established Psychology Club, the very premise of their mission lies in a paradox so perfect that it would cause even Sigmund Freud to foam at the mouth.
“Everybody knows what psychology is, but at the same time, nobody knows what psychology is,” Disha said. “It’s a general topic, [but] then there are so many niche subunits that I feel like there’s so much to learn.”
Disha, a co-vice president, and the rest of the club’s executive board members approach the infantile stages of such a new project with one objective in mind: to remain ready to unravel all that such a seemingly self-explanatory subject has to offer. A pillar of this, Disha believes, revolves around eradicating the bridge between the members and the leadership board.
“We are open to whatever ideas [the club members] have,” Disha said. “We’ll go with the flow a little bit. I think there are more options and ideas to do than just what we’re thinking, and because two semesters of a club is going to be a lot of different information, we want to get as much [involvement] as we can.”
For Disha and the leadership board, a vital keystone to this mission lies in straying away from rigidity and involving the club members as much as possible, providing incentive for all those involved to come out and contribute to the conversation. While other clubs may feel like an auxiliary class to balance amidst the six-hour school day, the Psychology Club hopes that members find meetings highly anticipatory, exciting, and an engagement to look forward to once the final school bell rings at the end of the day.
“I think a lot of this club is student-led,” Disha said, “so we’re going to be taking a lot of ideas from the people who actually come to participate. I feel like psychology is just one big question in itself, [so] we want to lean into just what we all want to discover.
With club meetings occurring every other Monday after school in Mr. Colegrove’s room, sophomore and club President, Evan Gagliardo, remains optimistic that the club will have a deep, informative impact on the participating student body despite initial setbacks.
“[The hardest thing about starting the club] was working with people’s schedules,” Evan said, “especially the people who have an interest in psychology but don’t have time for the class in their schedule; and, finding an advisor to help [was hard].”
Upon founding the club, Evan and the rest of the leadership body were adamant that a hands-on, engaging syllabus remain at the forefront of the club’s itinerary. From inviting practicing professionals in the psychology field to share their insight, implementing psychology-based video and movie analysis into the curriculum, to analyzing TED talks and doing introspective journaling, he hopes that members will remain enthralled with all the minutiae that such a broad topic entails.
“We’re gonna do a different activity based on psychology [each lesson],” Evan said, “and we’re always gonna do something interactive. There’s going to be a lot of group discussion. [Our main goal] is to get people involved. [We want] people to be talking about [psychology] and people who want to have a career in it learning more.”
Just as Evan hopes that the club members will find their place in the club, sophomore and co-Vice President Margaryta Smyrnova believes that, though federating leadership decisions and working in tandem with one another, the executive board will find a similar level of resonance with the topics at hand.
“We want to have psychology professions when we grow up,” Margaryta said, “so we thought it would be really interesting to learn along with other people. It’s fun to be able to make a community. We’re more influenced to learn ourselves.”
Regardless of one’s level of interest in the field, the leadership board is confident that psychology can materialize across multiple facets of everyone’s lives, whether they pursue it as a career or not. Whether one has a direct interest in pursuing a psychology occupation or simply wants to further their understanding of themselves and the world around them, the Psychology Club remains committed to both causes.
“You can also use your psychology knowledge to better yourself,” Margaryta said. “You can use it to help you in social situations, and it’s just a very helpful real-life tool that you can apply to situations that you see and things that are happening in your life interpersonally.”
