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Felicia Fischer

12/7/15
Reflection Paper
Choosing a major was honestly one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. I knew I
that I love psychology and the understanding of the human mind, but I also loved the
mathematics side of learning. I loved business and the corporate world simply fascinated me. In
looking to pursue law school as an end goal, Loras showed me how each of these fields could
benefit me in pursuing my law degree. They felt this two majors would give me a well-rounded
experience in different fields and it definitely has. Accounting and the business field gave me a
strong understanding of the corporate part of the world. This field allowed me to see the white
collar side of crime and what laws in particular would pertain to business. Along with that the
psychology field allowed me to have an understanding of the motivation behind why people
commit certain crimes and the ability to look ethically at situations as a professional.
In the law field I know that I will have to be prepared to deal with many different topics
and career fields and I will have to find a way to see the correlation between them. Although I
may want to only focus on one part of law, that is not always the situation and a lot of the time
many other factors will play a role, and I need to know how to understand those different aspects.
This is much like my time at Loras. Although I wanted to focus on my own major, I was
encouraged to take various different course. I soon learned that each of those course correlated in
many different ways and in becoming educated in one course, I was able to develop better in
another course. I know this way of learning has prepared me in many ways for my future as a
lawyer.
Although accounting and psychology were two very different majors they actually
overlapped in many ways. One specific situation in which I saw this overlap was between a
psychology class Cross-Cultural Psychology and a business class Principles of Management.
In both these classes we talked about the hierarchy of needs in which individuals need to have in
order to achieve self-actualization. In Principles of Management we talked about how these
needs were necessary for employees to help them be the best employees possible. In CrossCultural Psychology we talked about how these needs were necessary for people to achieve
more happiness and these need were less likely to be fulfilled for those with lower social
economic status. Although this concept was discussed in two totally different majors, it still
made the point that it was necessary no matter where you are in society.
These two majors along with many other general education courses, I have been able to
develop great growth in my time at Loras. Two of the Loras Dispositions in which this can be
seen is Reflective Thinker and Ethical-Decision Maker. One class in particular in which I became
a more active learner was Business Speaking and Writing, taken during the fall semester of my
junior year at Loras College. During this class I was able to participate in a mock hiring process.
We were asked to write and submit a resume and cover letter as if actually apply for a real job.
Our resumes and cover letters were then reviewed by Jeff Roberts in which he chose two
individuals to do a mock interview with. Following the interview he then chose who he would
hire if it were real life. During this process I was able to experience the real aspects of what

employers were looking for. In being one of the two individuals that was chosen for an interview,
I was able to experience the uncertainties felt in an interview and enhance my skills that will be
much needed in the future. This mock hiring process allowed for my interview application skills
to become enhanced and for me to receive helpful critic on where I could improve when
interviewing. This process was something that could have never been taught simply through a
book but allowed for much active learning on real world hiring processes. At the end of the mock
hiring process I was "offered the job." This was a great reward and learning experience that
taught me more than I would have ever thought. This course consisted of many presentations and
real world interactions that took my active learning at Loras to a new level.
A second class that allowed for me to become a more active learner was Psychology of
the Arts, also taken during my fall semester of my junior year. This was a class that was
interesting to me because it was apart of my major but looked at it from a whole new
perspective. Through this class we actively learned about the mind of musicians and artists. We
analyzed different artists and what their pieces of work said about their personalities. This class
took the way I looked at learning psychology and turned it around, making the class and the
project academically difficult; however, the longer I worked with the artists to understand them,
the more interested and amazed I became with this new way of viewing psychology. I loved the
way this class enhanced my active learning by taking a major and a topic that I thought I
understood and turning it around so that I was forced look and understand it from a whole new
perspective.
In my Senior Seminar class we focused on the major controversial issues that face much
of the psychological field; such as the use of animals in research, psychologist participation in
enhanced interrogations, the use of deception in research, etc. In looking at these issues we
analyzed what the right course of action would be based of the Ethical Principles of Psychologist
and Code of Conduct. In defending our positions on a specific topic we were asked to present
facts of ethics and facts of the topic. To present an argument for our side we had to use critical
thinking and enhanced ethical decision making. Neither side, to this day, can be determined
correct, making an argument difficult to defend; however, that was the point. In this class we
were forced to think critically about the ethics involved in each of these situations and make a
final decision based off what we believed was the most ethical I chose to analyze whether it was
ethical permissible for psychologist to participate in enhanced interrogations and torture. This
was a topic that took me a long time to decide on which side I was supporting, ultimately using
my best ethical decision making skills, I decided it was ethical permissible for psychologists to
be involved in enhanced interrogations and torture.
Along with my Senior Seminar class, I have grown my ethical decision-making skills in
my Genetics-Ethics class. In the class we learn about the new technologies being developed to
help alter and prevent certain genes from appearing in individuals and offspring. However, along
with these new developments there are new controversies on what is ethically permissible and
what is not. In this class we looked at various ethical theories such as Utilitarianism, Principlism,
Kant's theories, etc. in determining what actions are permissible when it comes to genetic
alterations. Through this class I was able to see how each of the theories can be applied
differently and ultimately result in different actions. One specific project that increased my

ethical decision making skills was one in which I had to apply a specific ethical theory to my
stance on a certain genetic alteration. I chose to research whether it was ethical permissible,
using the Utilitarian theory, to produced DroughtGard Corn. In conclusion to my research and
ethical analysis I decided that it was ethical permissible for DroughtGard corn to be produced.
These are just a few of the ways I have been able to grow at Loras College. My liberal
arts education is one that I would not trade for anything. I have been educated in so many
different fields and in the process I have learned how each of these interact with one another. In
my future as a lawyer, I know that this education will benefit me in many ways. Defending the
law does not consist of simply one major, but many different majors. Law incorporates many
disciplines and finds a way to understand each of them and find the relationships between them
which is exactly what I have learned in my time at Loras College.

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