"Methods of Investigation in Psychology"

One of my best classes this quarter is Psychology 2020: Methods of Investigation. Psychology 2020 is designed to introduce students to conducting psychological research, designing experiments and reporting findings. A major focus of the class is also ethics in research, and all of these things together form the basis of a good foundation in science. This is the only course I have taken so far that is not a freshman course, and I think because of this, the students take it more seriously and are more engaged. I am grateful for this more serious academic environment because it raises the bar for me.
The material we cover is more tangible and concrete than much of the content in other courses. What I mean is it is the type of information that you more easily translate into value in the real world, unlike most of psychology, which is a very soft science to begin with. Learning things like this gives one comfort when thinking about employability and the job market, and even just having the knowledge required to do well at something you're interested in.
Much of what is talked about is the scientific method. I think many people have this view of science as cold and dry, but that is not science as i see it. Science is a wonderful aesthetic. Lets talk a little about science. Science is about the pursuit of knowledge and truth. It acknowledges all the pitfalls of bias and prejudice that are working against building an accurate body of knowledge, but it tries it's best to minimize them, and whenever new and better information is found, it is accepted. Old ideas are not clung to without good reason to do so. Good reason not simply being "well this is what we know, and this is what we're comfortable with, so we'll just stick with this."
I find this scientific approach to be one of the better ways of navigating the world we live in. It's cornerstones of intellectual curiosity, reason, and acceptance of truth even when that truth may be very unpopular, give us greater access to our virtually limitless human potential.
This class has been incredibly informative and fairly challenging. It's piqued my intellectual curiosity and even inspired me to become a good statistician which is an important part of being an effective scientist. Thats not to say I'm not dreading my upcoming statistics class next quarter, only that I'll be able to approach it with a better attitude.