PSYC DAY 2024: Academic exhibition breaks the Stigma of Psychology

By, Siti Sufiah Binti Mohd Rasidan

GOMBAK, 18 December 2024: On Thursday, 12 December 2024, students from the Department of Psychology, AHAS KIRKHS, hosted an academic exhibition with the theme, ‘Honouring the Pursuit of Knowledge,’ which incorporated a few academic activities. The event was held in the Human Sciences Building at IIUM Gombak from 8.00 a.m. to 4.00 p.m.

After about three months of planning, the event finally came to light as many challenges arose along the way. The event was a collaboration between the secretariat of psychology with the department. “This event integrates what we have learned throughout the classes and these exhibitions are actually the projects that we have done in our classes,” said Muhammad Alif Haikal bin Mohamad, the program coordinator, a third year student, when asked of his thoughts on the preparation of the event.

The program manager also stated that the budget constraint was a challenge that they manage to overcome. ” We wanted to make it look at least decent but also not to spend too much money,” said Amanina Hussaini binti Dzulkeflee who was also the chairperson of the secretariat. Luckily, the event was successful and had a lot of positive feedbacks from the participants. “We were so shocked because we didn’t expect it to be this good,” said a group of students.

The highlight of the whole events was to show that psychology is more than just mental illnesses and clinical. “It is actually a more vast field of knowledge,” said Amanina Hussaini binti Dzulkeflee . The exhibitions introduced different types of psychology fields such as sports psychology, forensic psychology, cognitive psychology and so on that many students from other departments and courses may not be aware of. Therefore, the event involve 40 groups of psychology students in order to make this exhibition a success. The students were also very creative in presenting their information by using posters, models, demonstrations and video presentations which captured the attention and interest of the participants.

This event may have open a new window for all of the students, especially those from other courses. The exhibition was both informative and interactive which made it more interesting for people to learn new things. “I learned how to make a stress ball that could be used as a coping mechanism on stressing times from the clinical psychology booth,” said Syariful Sofiyullah bin Ahmad Syayidi, a participant of the event. Not only did the event manage to introduced the fields of psychology, but it gave the participants knowledge that might be useful for them in the future.***