After taking a year off, the psychology club aimed to reinvent itself and create more opportunities for others to learn more about psychology through various activities, experiments and group discussions. Through increased promotion, ranging from posters to word of mouth, the psychology club has gradually increased membership.

With a passion for psychology, senior and club president Naomi Stein said she wished to reopen the club and expand it to bring awareness to more students. In the club meetings, like-minded people who are curious about human thoughts, feelings and behaviors gather around to talk about articles and topics that are related to human behavior. 

“I wanted to become president because I have an immense amount of background knowledge on psychology, as I research and learn in my free time,” Stein said. “I genuinely find it fascinating, and I wanted to challenge myself with a leadership position.”

Stein said that she wanted others to feel welcome to join the club to learn more about psychology or to just listen in. Stein normally asks the club members what they’re interested in, or  introduces something that she had read or researched that she thought was interesting, and has a suggestion google form in google classroom. This helps her plan out what to do during the meetings so she never runs out of ideas. 

“It’s a very safe place and we all take turns listening to each other’s ideas,” Stein said. “I am always there for you and your friend if you ever need to talk, even if it’s not about the club.” 

At recent meetings, members have done personality tests, learned about how the military trains people to kill and briefly touched on forensic psychology. 

“If you are interested in the way people act, why they do certain things or even just curious about yourself and your own brain, come check out psychology club Friday during DEN,” Stein said. 

After completing a research project this summer, junior Vishnupriya Gupta said she felt compelled to join the club. She asked a teacher to help her practice writing a research paper and the topic she chose was profiling. As she researched this topic and started reading multiple articles, she said she really started to get interested in criminal profiling. 

“I really wanted to do something with psychology, but I was not able to join the psychology class, so my mom suggested that I join the club,” Gupta said. 

According club sponsor and AP Psychology teacher Nancy Steele, a couple years ago, a student asked if they could have a psychology club and she thought it was a great idea and they went ahead with it. 

“Some members in the club aren’t in my psychology class, while others had my psychology class in the past, and some are interested in taking the class in future, so the club gives them an opportunity to see what psychology is like,” Steele said. “I wanted it to be a student-led organization where they could learn about careers in psychology, topics, research and maybe have a community service project.” 

Wanting to be a therapist when she grew up, sophomore Arianna Gentili Garza wanted to learn more about psychology in depth with others who were interested in it as well. She has struggled with anxiety and depression for the past several years, and some of her family members have had the same issues around her age and even in their adulthood. She said that it has been hard developing coping mechanisms and recognizing the struggles in her own mental health and the psychology club has helped her find people who have similar issues and have a strong interest in learning more in depth about mental illnesses.

“I want to just help people out and hear peoples problems and be like a support system, but medically instead of just an emotional support system,” Garza said. “I want to be able to diagnose people and to make a change in someone’s life.”

According to Garza, she liked the diversity of ideas and different perspectives on psychology. She appreciated that the club meetings were more of discussions rather than lectures.

“I like how the meetings are tuned to what we want to learn,” Garza said. “I like that we are able to talk about something thoroughly and be able to go back and forth between all the ideas, and listening to someone else’s perspective can help your own.” 

Senior Jillian Lach has always been interested in how the mind works and finds it fascinating. She said she learned how to converse with people, learned more about psychology and learned more about herself throughout the club. 

“I have learned about my personality type, my love language, and about how I can take what I have learned in the club into the future and implement psychology into everyday life,” Lach said.

The psychology clubs meets every Friday during DEN in room 1209. The remind code is @a4h4g6 and the Google Classroom code is pej6lih.