My name is Isabel Beckenstein and I’m 25 years old. I’m a graduating senior majoring in Psychology. Psychology has always been an immense passion of mine. After years of working with children, I’ve been inspired to pursue a career in child development. Our knowledge of developmental psychology can only be understood with a solid foundation of experimental psychology, considering the valuable quantifiable information that it has provided. As someone who constantly seeks to quantify and understand the world around me, experimental psychology has provided me with a means of doing so. My goal for this semester is to acquire a solid foundation in my understanding of developmental psychology, specifically in how we acquire and interpret data. Navigating truth can be difficult in our society of constant bombardment of biased opinions, presented as facts, however a strong understanding of research methods will assist in deciphering credible sources from falsehoods.
My name is Kayla Zuniga and I’m a senior here at Hunter. I’m 21 years old and I was born and raised in Staten Island, New York. Also known as the forgotten borough! I currently reside there but am planning to move out of there once I graduate. I’m majoring in psychology with a focus in developmental psychology. I’m extremely interested in seeing how and why humans change over the course of their life. Children interest me most and I hope to make working with them apart of my career. I have always worked with children ever since I was young. I started off babysitting, went to camp counseling, and I am now a nanny. I love seeing children grow and I think working with children is such a rewarding job. I believe that we can learn a lot from children as much as they can learn from us. I started as a Criminal Justice Major at John Jay College and decided that’s not what I wanted to do which is why I transferred to Hunter College. I decided to go for what I love instead of focusing on the money. I graduate in May and my intentions are to go to graduate school for Educational Psychology also here at Hunter College. I am not completely certain on what I want to do with my degrees but I know it’ll all work out.
My name is Yesica Escorza, pronounced as Jessica, and I’m 21 years old. I was born and raised in Queens, New York. I am the middle child of three. I have an older sister and I younger brother. I am currently majoring in psychology and will, hopefully, be a senior next semester. Like Kayla, I’m planning on declaring a focus in Developmental Psychology. Originally, when I was applying to colleges, I planned to major in Business. However, once taking a Psychology class at Hunter College, that quickly changed. While I knew what I wanted to major in, I had no idea what exactly I wanted to do after I graduate with a degree. I think that my trip to Ecuador in 2016 helped. In Ecuador, I was able to teach Sex Education to students who dropped out of school and decided to go to a technical school. There, I made an instant connection to one of the girls who had a learning disability that no one paid attention to. When given the one on one help she needed, she did very well in the course. It made me think more about how many people with disabilities don’t get the help they need because some just simply don’t know much about it. Although I wasn’t working with children, this experience made me want to look more into children with special need and try to help from the beginning, their development. I took this class because one of my friends highly recommended it. She said the class was very fun and since I need the class to fulfill a requirement part of my focus, I decided to take it. I’m also extremely interested in working with children specifically children with special needs. I hope to find out more about Developmental Psychology and how it will help me in the future.
