In Murphy’s article she talks about success within college.
Speaking about the different aspects of a successful college student she
categorizes them into three different types of learners: surface, strategic and
deep learners. I don’t think this is accurate.
The purpose of college is learning valuable skills for our
professional career so that when we graduate we can contribute to the work
force. Besides this generic understanding I have always looked at it a little
differently. Throughout my college experience I have always understood my
success to be how I learn from my mistakes. Being in college for the last three
years has helped me mature and grow in so many ways.
Whether it was social academically or organizationally, most
of my knowledge that I came to learn was because I made so many mistakes. I
would forget to do assignments, leave my clothes in the washer too long and buy
the wrong groceries. All these mistakes, being big or small have all helped me
learn so much in college. With every error I had to reassess myself and work on
how to improve from the mistake.
If it was buying too
many snacks instead of real food at the grocery store, I would next week come
back with a more specific list. If it was forgetting an assignment, I would
make sure to input every following assignment on my google calendar. If I would
leave my clothes in the washer, I would next time make sure to put a timer on
my phone to remind me to take them out.
The most important key to this style of learning is recognizing
your mistakes. If you aren’t able to recognize the mistakes your making you are
never going to end up fixing them which means, you’ll never learn. In an article
from Elite Daily written by Ashley Fern regarding learning from your mistakes,
they give us a valuable quote: “Good judgment comes from experience and
experience comes from poor judgment.” If you are able to current your mistakes
and bad judgement, you’ll become better at whatever it was that you were doing.
I had a math teacher here at San Diego State that would
teach me such a valuable lesson. Whenever I got a problem wrong on the test, he
would tell me to go back and work to fix my specific mistake. His reason for this
was that if you realize and correct your mistake, you would never make that
mistake ever again. He was right.
Applying this concept to the different aspect in my college
experience has truly helped me grow and learn. Besides studying for classes and
learning material that I mostly won’t use throughout my life, I became invested
in making the best experiences for myself. The knowledge that I learn I’ll most
likely forget, but the experience and the countless mistakes, will be with me forever.
https://www.elitedaily.com/life/why-you-need-to-learn-from-your-mistakes
https://ideas.time.com/2013/03/13/secrets-of-the-most-successful-college-students/
https://www.elitedaily.com/life/why-you-need-to-learn-from-your-mistakes
https://ideas.time.com/2013/03/13/secrets-of-the-most-successful-college-students/
Hello Bernardo,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your approach on college being about learning certain skills to apply to your professional career. Going into college my mindset was always like, “I have to get an A in this class” and that ended up putting me under more stress than what was necessary. When I chose to put deeper understanding first, of course my grades were not as good and I made more mistakes but through those mistakes I was able to learn, thus allowing myself to grow as a student. I feel like the more you focus on the deeper meaning of material, the easier time you will have applying that information to your career after college and so on. The more you chase a grade, the more you tend to take shortcuts and cheat your way to a better grade. The “pursue passion” mentality is ideal for a college student and it will help them be successful in the future.
Hello Bernardo!
ReplyDeleteI like that you emphasized the importance of correcting your mistakes both in everyday life and academically. The mistakes in themselves do not necessarily improve us. Assessing why or how we made the mistake so we do not repeat it in the future is how we learn and grow.
I do think that your points on learning from mistakes and Jacob's point on pursuing passion do still fit into the tips outlined even if you do not agree with the overarching categories of learners or the point of the college experience. For example, I think "pursing passion, not A's" aligns with Jacobs point about focusing on career skills and not excessively stressing over unrelated classes. However, the author may argue that students should make an effort to dig deeper to make a personal connection to the subject. Also, getting comfortable with failure is arguably just another way of saying you can learn from your mistakes.
I think you took this response in a new and interesting direction! Our personal growth in an equally important experience to be invested in during our time as college students as well as our career and academic growth.
Hey Bernardo,
ReplyDeleteIt is always important to learn from your mistakes. A lot of these articles focused on the academics of college but I liked how you incorporated the other aspects of your life as well such as grocery shopping and laundry as those remedial tasks are still important aspects of our lives.
I personally always look at certain situations in which I didn’t the result I wanted like a bad grade, spent to much money eating out, and maybe an awkward encounter and reevaluate the situation. This is allows me to reflect on why I got the negative result. This allows me to focus on the actions I can do next time so I don’t get that result. Like not bringing my debit card when I go out to eat and having a fixed amount of money on me or attending office hours to ask questions.
I guess making mistakes is growing up because those mistakes give us opportunities to learn and grow as individuals.
Best,
Kurt