School of Psychology blog

Robert Avery is a student in the MRes in Psychological Methods. A dual citizen of the United Kingdom and Switzerland, Robert studied a BSc in Psychology at the University of Fribourg and is now planning to do a PhD. He is interested in the influence of gendered languages on adolescents’ gender construct and job aspirations. We asked Robert about his experience studying our MRes and how the course has helped him prepare for his next career step.

What I like the most about my MRes in Psychological Methods is that it does what it says on the box: most of our days are spent working on different statistical and research methods. The course includes several modules designed to broaden our methodological knowledge of specific areas of psychology, but the main focus is on general research methods. I particularly enjoy the quality of the teaching: the School of Psychology at Sussex is a research-intensive institution and many of its faculty members are highly regarded for their research. All this transpires in their teaching. Being part of such a deep pool of keen and important minds is definitely inspiring.

As expected, this Masters course demands high discipline. This particular MRes can be quite intense: the deadlines for the various assignments are spaced out, but the work each one of them requires comes on top of the course content. This can be hard to juggle and you need to stay focused the entire year.

The teaching is of high quality, but I think that a 1-year Masters (as is the custom in England) is not enough time for students to take modules that would help them cover psychology topics in more depth. In other words, this particular Masters is a route towards a career in research, and not towards a thorough understanding of psychological areas (e.g. social psychology, cognitive, neuro, etc.). It feels like the MRes course has replaced those taught psychology-focused modules with a year-long research internship; this is precisely the hands-on experience that first attracted me to the course. A valuable process for those like me who want to direct themselves towards academia.

The emphasis on research (that spans over both terms) required me to organise my time and be pro-active. It is well-known that we get what we put into things and this is no exception: the more invested in the projects you are, the more experience you get. Your own motivation combined with staff’s proficiency provides the potential to learn the required skills to conduct your own research. Time management is essential to complete the course, but the MRes does allow you to organise your time and there are always opportunities to take part in the various activities the University and Brighton have to offer.

So far, my time spent at Sussex studying Psychology has met my expectations. I have made the most of the well-trained staff’s knowledge, and the course has also enabled me to get to the forefront of current research methods (through the multiple statistics modules, for example). The MRes has also given me the confidence to write my own PhD grant application. Thanks to academic contacts facilitated by faculty, I was able to reach out to several universities and approach potential supervisors.  I have ended up writing a PhD project with one of them and submitting it to the Swiss national fund for research.

A course well worth it for those who have the drive to take their academic career into their own hands!

To support the University’s One World Week, the Psychology Student Experience team hosted ‘Desserts of the World’ in the Pevensey 1 building. This event was aimed at celebrating our diverse staff and student population and using food to learn about different countries, cultures and traditions. Faculty and students were invited to make or provide a dessert from their home country with a prize for the student who supplied the “Most Inspirational Dessert”. Information about the desserts and why they were chosen was provided by the participants. Countries represented included Australia, Brazil, Cyprus, Germany and Spain, alongside many from the UK.

The event was a success with students enjoying the homemade element of the event and being able to learn about new cultures. And all desserts were eaten.

The winner of the Most Inspirational Dessert 2019 was Bianca Popescu, a first year Psychology student, who made mucenici (Moldovian style) also known sfințișori, which means ‘little saints’ in Romanian.

We asked Bianca about the history of this dessert and why she had chosen it, and this is what she told us:

I was reading my emails when I spotted the one from Student Experience team announcing the event. At first I was only thinking what an interesting event the team had put together but then I decided that I could also help out by providing something unique, traditionally Romanian.

In Romania, many religious traditions have their “corresponding food” that is closely associated with it, and it was quite hard for me to figure out what to choose. After some research and consulting my grandmother, I came upon mucenici, and when I saw that they don’t appear to be seen in any other cultures, I jumped at the idea of cooking them. 

As a child, I always looked forward to this festivity. The sweet honey, combined with toasted walnut and chewy, binge-worthy dough wasn’t like anything else. My mom would wake me up with the freshly baked pastry and invite me to have coffee with her in the kitchen, which was always filled with the smell of rum essence and melty honey. I decided to make the Moldavian version as it is the closest one to my heart. The dough recipe is very similar to the one used to make another traditional Romanian dessert (cozonac, a type of sweet bread).

As so, on a sunny Sunday morning (after waking up at 11 am, panicked that shops close early on Sunday) I was just casually shopping at Asda, looking for 3 bags of walnuts, lots of flour, 10 eggs and a mountain of sugar (doesn’t sound healthy, but the dessert is worth the blood sugar spice). Then I arrived home, started to clean the surfaces (because, trust me, you need that space) and asked my boyfriend to come down and help. The first accident happened when the yeast started fermenting and was suddenly everywhere. We sorted that out and left the dough to rise for a couple of hours. Then we started kneading the dough in turns (as it is a demanding process only our grannies are trained to do from start to finish). Then we formed shapes of 8 and baked them. Finally, we drowned the 8 shaped pieces in syrup and covered them in nuts. The whole process took me a day to complete, but it was worth it! I still have no clue how my mom was able to cook this before I even woke up. She probably woke up very early in the day (NB. she’s my superhero).