Expanding My Knowledge

When I was a teenager and going through a lot after my parents' divorce I decided to go to college to study Psychology GCSE. I'd always been interested in how the mind works and had no clue what I wanted to do for a job so I took a year to decide.

I loved studying Psychology, I have an inquisitive mind and love to learn about why people do the things they do. The psychology GCSE just opened up that world to me and I was hooked. Unfortunately I couldn't continue with my studies and life took over.

Years later when I started writing my novel I used some of my knowledge of psychology, but to be honest I didn't study to an advanced level so my knowledge was somewhat limited. Trying to write a crime novel, when having no understanding of how a criminal's mind works is very hard. I tried to go to the dark places in my head, I learned about sinful characters, and in the process learned a lot about myself. 

I read books, I watched police programmes on TV (Lewis, Sherlock, Frost) and took endless notes. What I found was that reading about what goes on in a criminal's mind, how they choose their victims, and what kind of weapon they would choose gave me a thrill (morbid I know). 

Recently I was asked to review an online learning course, my first instinct was to say no, I mean, who has the time? Then I spotted the Psychology of Criminal Profiling course, I had to review it didn't I. It just jumped out at me and I knew straight away that I would enjoy it. It certainly won't lead to a job in criminal profiling, but it could definitely help in the future if I ever get back to my novel

NCC Home Learning have a wide range of courses for all types of people including teaching, wedding planning, forensics, and genealogy.

After logging in with my personal login and password I found out that my online learning course has 12 modules, that's lots of reading. 



As I looked through the list of the modules and saw some of the things I'll be reading about I got a little excited. I'll be learning about murders such as the Boston Strangler, and The Yorkshire Ripper. I already have a huge book about the Yorkshire Ripper which I read a while back. I loved reading that book so I know I'm going to enjoy reading about these cases. 

The great thing about this online learning course is there's no pressure to read and do exams to a schedule. I can read, take notes, and learn, at my own pace, taking the exam when I feel I'm ready. I can do extra research if I feel I need to and the modules actually list suggested reading material for each section. 



I'm excited to get onto the more interesting reading, where I begin to learn about the cases themselves.

Mama-andmore