Senior Spotlight: Independent Studies, Ella Johnson and Avery Nemo: Social Psychology

Riverdale Review: Please briefly discuss the subject of your independent study.

Ella Johnson and Avery Nemo: We did an independent study on social psychology, and we talked about how life experiences like trauma and family relationships affect the person that you are today. 

Riverdale Review: Why did you choose to spend time studying this topic?

EJ: It was something that we were both really interested in, and we spend a lot of our free time talking and thinking about it, so it seemed like a good way to learn more. 

AN: Individually we are both interested in why people are the way they are, which leads us to be interested in psychology and to understand people; their thoughts and their minds; and how we interact with others, so it felt natural. We were both immediately interested in an independent study when we heard about it last year, and wanted a more specific and comprehensive analysis of how to apply our knowledge to understand who we are and who other people are. 

Riverdale Review: What has been your biggest challenge during this experience?

EJ:  Figuring out the best source of information and how we were going to put it together in a final concept. 

AN: We mainly focused on people around us, so finding resources wasn’t that difficult, but finding resources that helped us understand other people, not just psychological experiments that have been produced by scientists, was a bit more challenging.

Riverdale Review: Do you two have one major takeaway from your research?

EJ: I think everything we learned was not about how something applied to everyone, it was more thinking and critical thinking, as well as taking the information and contextualizing it and thinking about it in a subjective manner. Most subjects are concrete, but this topic has so much more discussions, conflicting ideas, and possibilities, which leaves you always wanting to learn more.

AN: I totally agree with that, it mirrors the nuance and discussion-debate that a humanities class would. One of our projects was a debate on nature vs. nurture, and there are so many concepts that we could debate because there are so many perspectives, with no right answer. What interested me was that there was so much to explore without having one right answer, and I think I speak for Ella too.