KimberlyCastro

January29,2015
Period4

CollegeKnowledge
Over the years the pressure togoto collegerightout of highschool is atanall
time high.Students are lookingforwaystomake themselvesstandoutfromtheirpeers
and make themselves more appealing to colleges and universities. They then must
excel in their courses to succed in their career.So how do students do this? Theonly
way todothis is to gainacertainsetof skillsthatarerequiredinwhattheyremajoring
in.Forme my majors would be political science. Since thereisnosetmajortobecome
alawyer the skills in orderto become a lawyer have to be learnedfromthemajorsthat
you do take. The skills needed vary from having good memorization to good
organization skills, being observant and focused, writing, research and analytic skills,
and most importantly good speaking skills. One of the skills needed to become a
lawyer is that you must memorize a lot of information on laws,cases and precedents.
Once you graduate, they must demonstrate their mastery of the subject matter by
passing the bar exam. During the entire career, lawyers must keepupwith changesin
their particular area of practice. In most states, lawyers must complete continuing
education to maintain licensing. Being able to learn and retain what youvelearned is
somethingcalleddeclarative memoryand inorderforthistowork,largenetworksinthe

cerebralcortex work togetherwith thehippocampustosupportthedeclarativememory.

Thisplaysanimportantroleinmemorizationoflaws.

With intense competition for places, it is vital students can demonstrate a

longtermcommitmenttoacareerinlaw,whichcanbeshownthroughworkexperience.
It is important that you acquire work experience in both a legal and commercial
environment to evidence your interest, enthusiasm and motivationforpursuing alegal
career. To trace the source of motivation, the brain where neurotransmitters spark
chemical messages to keep us alert and on task. One specific neurotransmitter that
plays a role in motivation is dopamine.Dopamines chemical signal gets passed from
one neuron to the next, interacting with variousreceptors inside the synapse between
the two neurons. Thissimplearrangementbecomes muchmorecomplicatedwhenyou
multiply the effect through the entire brain. Consider: there are different types of
receptors, neurons, and pathways that neurotransmitters can take. Things get
complicated fast.For motivation specifically, it matterswhichpathway dopamine takes.
The mesolimbic pathway, which originates in the middle of the brain and branches to
various places like the cerebral cortex, is the most important reward pathway in the
brain.One of the mesolimbic stops is thenucleus accumbens. Increaseddopaminein
the nucleus accumbens signals feedback forpredicting rewards. Your brainrecognizes
thatsomething important,good or bad,is abouttohappen,thustriggeringmotivationto
dosomething. Dopaminesimpacton thebody is felt inmanydifferentareas, including
motivation, memory, behavior and cognition, attention, sleep, mood, learning, and
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pleasurable reward.Studies of dopamine began with pleasure until researchers began

noticing peculiar phenomena. They saw spikes in dopamine during moments of high
stress. Dopamine rose inthecaseofsoldierswithPTSDwhoheardgunfire.Itwasclear
thatdopamine wentbeyond merepleasure,and it turnsoutdopaminestrueeffectmay
be motivation. Dopamine performs its task before we obtain rewards, meaningthat its
real job is to encourage us to act and motivate us to achieve or avoid something
bad.Studies confirm the motivationdopamine link in a number of interesting ways.
Behavioral neuroscientist John Salamone confirmed thelinkin ananimal study on rats
who were given thechoiceof onepileof food or anotherpileof food twicethesizebut
behind a small fence.The rats withloweredlevels ofdopamine almost alwaystookthe
easyway out, choosing the smallpileinsteadofjumpingthefenceforgreaterreward.In
another study, a team of Vanderbilt scientists mapped the brains of gogetters and
slackers and found that those willing to work hard for rewards hadhigher dopamine
levelsin thestriatum andprefrontalcortextwoareasknowntoimpactmotivationand
reward. Among slackers, dopamine was present in the anterior insula, an area of the
brainthat isinvolvedin emotionandrisk perception.AsSalamoneexplains, Lowlevels
of dopamine make people and other animals less likely to work for things, so it has
more to do with motivation and cost/benefit analysesthanpleasure itself.This all ties
backtothemotivationthatisneededtobealawyer.
The popular image of memory is as a kind oftinyfiling cabinet fullofindividual
memory folders in which information is stored away, or perhaps as a neural
supercomputer of huge capacityand speed. However, in thelight ofmodernbiological

and psychological knowledge, these metaphors may notbeentirely useful and, today,
expertsbelievethatmemoryisinfactfarmorecomplexandsubtlethanthat.
Itseems thatourmemoryislocatednotinoneparticularplaceinthebrain,butis
instead a brainwide process in which several different areas of the brain act in
conjunction withoneanother.Forexample,thesimpleactofridingabikeisactivelyand
seamlessly reconstructed by the brainfrommanydifferentareas:thememoryofhowto
operate the bikecomes from onearea, the memory of howto get from here totheend
of the block comes from another, the memoryof biking safetyrules from another, and
thatnervousfeelingwhen acarveersdangerouslyclosecomesfromstillanother.Each
elementof a memory (sights, sounds,words,emotions) is encodedin thesamepartof
the brain that originally created that fragment (visual cortex, motor cortex, language
area, etc),and recall ofamemoryeffectivelyreactivates the neuralpatternsgenerated
during the original encoding. Thus, a better image might be thatof a complexweb, in
which the threads symbolize the various elements of a memory, that join at nodes or
intersection points to form awholerounded memory of a person,object orevent. This
kindofdistributed memoryensuresthatevenifpartof thebrainisdamaged,someparts
of an experience may still remain. Neurologists are only beginningto understand how
the parts are reassembled into a coherent whole.Neither is memory a single unitary
process but there are different types of memory. Our short term and longterm
memories are encoded and stored in different waysand indifferentparts of thebrain,
forreasonsthatweareonlybeginningtoguessat.

Itis important to knowwhathappens in thebrain whenyouareacquiringcertain

skillsbecause only thanwillyouunderstandhowyoulearnandhow thingscanhelpyou
furtheryourlearningabilitythatwillhelpyoubesuccessfulinyourcareer.
Aschoolthatwould suit myneeds inaccomplishingmymajorinpoliticalscience
would be Carleton College in Northfield Minnesota. Carleton is a small private liberal
arts college. Carleton also offers some of the best financial aid in the U.S.They are
committedtomeeting100%offinancialneedforalladmittedstudents,allfouryears.
Political science encompasses the study of governments and international
organizations, political behavior, public policies, political processes, systems, and
theory. It includes American politics, comparative politics, political philosophy,
international relations and world politics. The department's curriculum is designed to
cultivate judicious and productive citizenship, as well as provide versatile skills and
knowledge. These can be applied to a wide range of fields, including law, business,
government,internationalservice,education,journalism,andotherfields.
Since Carleton is a small liberal artsschoolwith a nine toonestudent ratio,this
will givemefreedom totake the required classesforpoliticalscienceneededin asmall
student to teacher ratio. The core courses required for this major are
POSC 120
Comparative Political Regimes, POSC 122 Politics in America: Liberty and Equality,
POSC 160 Political Philosophy, POSC 170 International Relations and World Politics
American Elections of 2014 which focuses on the campaigns and results of the 2014
American elections.This course examines (1) the electoral role of parties, candidates

and interest groups (2) prior "midterm" elections in U.S. history and (3) voting trends
and policy results from the 2008, 2010 and 2012 elections. Students will perform
postelection analysis of 2014 U.S. House, Senate, state gubernatorial and state
legislative elections by examining exit polls andelectionresults. Theseoralreports will
serve as the basisfor thefinalexamination.Competitive Political Regimes which isAn
introduction to the fundamentals of government and the variety of ways politics is
practiced in different countries. Capitalist democracies, transitional states and
developing nations are compared. Politics inAmerica: Liberty andEqualityis a course
that was an introductionto Americangovernment andpolitics. Focuson theCongress,
Presidency, political parties and interest groups, the courts and the Constitution.
Particular attention will be given to the public policy debates that divide liberals and
conservativesand howthese divisions arerootedinAmericanpoliticalculture.Methods
of Political Research is an introduction to research method, research design, and the
analysis of political data. The course is intended to introduce students to the
fundamentals of scientificinquiryastheyareemployedinthediscipline.Thecoursewill
consider thephilosophyofscientificresearchgenerally,thephilosophyofsocialscience
research, theory building and theory testing, the components of applied (quantitative
and qualitative) research across the major subfields of political science, and basic
methodological tools. Intended for majors only.
MATH 115 Introduction to Statistics,
MATH 215 Introduction to Probability and Statistics, MATH 245 Applied Regression
Analysis, MATH 275 Introduction to Statistical inference or MATH Stats AP. Math
courses may be taken on an elective S/CR/NCbasis.POSC 230: Methods ofPolitical

Research.
These courses all are important courses that are needed tograduate with a
degreein politicalscienceto then go onto graduate schoolto become alawyer.These
helpyoudeveloptheimportantskillsneededtobecomealawyer.
At the beginningof this project I didntknow much on how our brainworkedand
how it connected to learning. I knew the brain had some connection to learning but I
didnt know that certain parts of the brain contributed todifferent aspects oflearning. I
also never reallythought about the waywe learnand connectingitto college. Ialways
thought it was choosing your school than themajor. Ineverconsideredanything else.
With this project Ive realised that college process is a much more complicated and
important one than just choosing your school and major. Many thingscome intoplay,
like the size of the school, student to teacher ratio, financial aid, and courses that
correspond with the major youre planningongettingadegree on.I still needto figure
out if I want to go out of state for college or stayin Californiabecause Iknow thatifI
stay inCalifornia,the cost won't be ashighasifweretogooutof stateforcollege.This
is a very tough decision for me because a lot of the school that I want to go to, like
Carleton College, are out of state and are on the other side of the country. I need to
research moreon thecoasts of schoolin andout of state andtry tofindthebestplace
to study that will help me grow as a student and hopefully offer financial aid soI can
attend the best school that will challenge me academically. My goals for preparing to
apply to college is to do everything ahead of time so I have time to do everything
thoroughly and not rushanyapplications,essays orpersonalstatements,maybeeven
applyforearlydecision.