I think there exist several opportunities for freshman to interact with upper level students but those exists primarily in the social setting. This is just my perspective, and it may be different elsewhere, but while it was not easy to meet upperclassmen, it was not overly difficult. In my situation, I was the only one from my high school to enter U of I. Therefore, with no friend base I tried to explore and reach to many other people by joining activities.
It was relatively easy to make friends with other freshman. Every freshman is required to live in university housing. You meet your floor mates even before school begins and tend form groups to eat together in the dining halls. From there, you meet their friends and then suddenly you happen to know a lot of people. Another thing that I did was to just walk onto a tennis court and request to join them. If our levels were close, we would meet again to play. Lastly, there are many freshman introductory courses in which you meet other freshman in the same major. You meet many people quickly and realize that you will be together with them until graduation.
As I have mentioned, it is very easy to meet other freshmen. It is much harder to meet upperclassman and generally people from other majors. You are herded along with other first years to take required introductory courses. Typically few or none of the upperclassman attend these courses. This is true especially for the classes in your major. Most of the seniors that I met freshman year were from classes outside of major like Physics or Gen Eds. These were also dependent on the credits the students came with to skip intro classes.
An option that I personally like to meet seniors was to join a club or RSO. The Quad Day is great idea in this respect to introduce incoming freshman to the many clubs available on campus. After joining a club you meet a variety of people of varying class standings. Bound together by a common interest, there is good chance to make good friends.
Now from the perspective of an upperclassman, I feel that I don't necessarily “mentor” the freshman that I know. Sure, I help them when they need it. I also give advice on classes and general campus life, but it's a different king of relationship than mentoring. As you have questioned, there is a transfer of knowledge, or wisdom if you will, but typically it's subconscious.
I have had the opportunity to be both a mentor and a mentee so far. My perspective has also varied vastly between the two positions. As a mentee, I look up to my mentor and I sometimes feel awkward establishing contact. As a mentor, I try my best to smooth things out for my mentee and perceive things from a different perspective. What I realize in the end is that each mentor-mentee relationship is different and everything comes down to compatibility. Similar to our class project, when two people are pushed into this kind of relationship, the outcome will vary across the population.
When someone meets an upperclassman in a more natural things also appear less forced or enforced so your relationship with them is more of a friend and than a mentor. In the end, most of the work falls onto the mentor to maintain the relationship. Mentoring programs are always a good idea and proving good results but, depending on how motivated the mentor is, there is a larger chance of our program to be a success.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Learning from Experience
Hey everyone, I'm finally back. Look forward to class on Monday.
The obvious answer would be Yes. Yes, I have learned from past experiences. Although courses are one good example of the situation, it does not cover everything. As we progress further into academia and college, we encounter material that we have faced before. Several classes often have required pre-requisites. Once we have taken a course we are expected to have learned the basics and then apply the knowledge towards the next level. This is a natural progression of learning through experience where the learning can be quantified.
However, more often than not, I notice that I learn from having more experience. For example, after repeated practice in tennis by body takes action in a game before my mind does. The learning come through a mass of experience either through practice or match experience. Another example on a smaller scale and that which is more personal: minesweeper. That's the game that is available on every pc with a Windows OS. In the beginning, I felt that they game was very hard and I couldn't understand some of the nuances. Later, I suddenly found myself playing the game at a rapid pace and defusing the mines using intuition rather than logical reasoning. I became familiar with certain arrangements so much so that I no longer need the reasoning process.
As seen from the previous example, I believe that “learning” does not posses “scale.” Learning can be “transformative” but it is not required to be so. The small things that we experience in life are as important to our learning experience as life-shattering incidents. Everything makes up for who we are. Although, I do not possess a definitive example, many story books often involve characters that have vastly different personalities even with the same background. However, I digress.
The question is whether we can introspectively recognize whether we have learned anything from an experience and consciously “use” your learning, even transfer it. I do not often notice whether I'm actively using a lesson that I have learned from past experience. I feel that it depends on at the point of learning whether I was active or passive. If I came in with the objective of learning, I actively participate in the experience. Then as I become aware of the knowledge gained, it is also easier to pass it on to others. I often help my friends in their class work and evidence of my learning is transfered to the professors through testing.
During passive learning, these are often the skills one refers to when they mention someone with many years of experience. When one collects experience with many years on the job, they sometimes may not be aware of the changes within themselves. In addition, they cannot easily pass on this knowledge to others since they did not amass it as one does in school. I can label this somewhat along with intuition similar to when I play video games. I often make decisions that others might consider as a waste of time simple because after many hours of playing the game I just know when and where to speed up/slow down or to buy/exchange weapons atc. The gaming knowledge is something I gained through experience and not everything is transferable since a mjor portion of it is intuition.
Lastly, I think that everyone judges learning differently. In the class setting, grades often lend themselves as a measure of student learning. However, some students are content with a B, others A and few who strive for the A+. Their standards do not match up amongst their peers. There are also the cases when an engineer in a history class does not desire to learn more that what's necessary to pass the class. The engineer and the history major have different objectives which changes their perspective on learning. So for an engineer simply knowing the year in which the Magna Carta was signed may be impressive, it would be unthinkable for a British history major to not know every detail regarding who signed it, when, why, etc.
The obvious answer would be Yes. Yes, I have learned from past experiences. Although courses are one good example of the situation, it does not cover everything. As we progress further into academia and college, we encounter material that we have faced before. Several classes often have required pre-requisites. Once we have taken a course we are expected to have learned the basics and then apply the knowledge towards the next level. This is a natural progression of learning through experience where the learning can be quantified.
However, more often than not, I notice that I learn from having more experience. For example, after repeated practice in tennis by body takes action in a game before my mind does. The learning come through a mass of experience either through practice or match experience. Another example on a smaller scale and that which is more personal: minesweeper. That's the game that is available on every pc with a Windows OS. In the beginning, I felt that they game was very hard and I couldn't understand some of the nuances. Later, I suddenly found myself playing the game at a rapid pace and defusing the mines using intuition rather than logical reasoning. I became familiar with certain arrangements so much so that I no longer need the reasoning process.
As seen from the previous example, I believe that “learning” does not posses “scale.” Learning can be “transformative” but it is not required to be so. The small things that we experience in life are as important to our learning experience as life-shattering incidents. Everything makes up for who we are. Although, I do not possess a definitive example, many story books often involve characters that have vastly different personalities even with the same background. However, I digress.
The question is whether we can introspectively recognize whether we have learned anything from an experience and consciously “use” your learning, even transfer it. I do not often notice whether I'm actively using a lesson that I have learned from past experience. I feel that it depends on at the point of learning whether I was active or passive. If I came in with the objective of learning, I actively participate in the experience. Then as I become aware of the knowledge gained, it is also easier to pass it on to others. I often help my friends in their class work and evidence of my learning is transfered to the professors through testing.
During passive learning, these are often the skills one refers to when they mention someone with many years of experience. When one collects experience with many years on the job, they sometimes may not be aware of the changes within themselves. In addition, they cannot easily pass on this knowledge to others since they did not amass it as one does in school. I can label this somewhat along with intuition similar to when I play video games. I often make decisions that others might consider as a waste of time simple because after many hours of playing the game I just know when and where to speed up/slow down or to buy/exchange weapons atc. The gaming knowledge is something I gained through experience and not everything is transferable since a mjor portion of it is intuition.
Lastly, I think that everyone judges learning differently. In the class setting, grades often lend themselves as a measure of student learning. However, some students are content with a B, others A and few who strive for the A+. Their standards do not match up amongst their peers. There are also the cases when an engineer in a history class does not desire to learn more that what's necessary to pass the class. The engineer and the history major have different objectives which changes their perspective on learning. So for an engineer simply knowing the year in which the Magna Carta was signed may be impressive, it would be unthinkable for a British history major to not know every detail regarding who signed it, when, why, etc.
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