One of my favorite aspects of college, just in my first week, has been watching everything I learn connect.
It's obviously a coincidence that the book I'm reading outside of class is correlating so well with everything my Sociology professor teaches us, but to be completely honest, it makes me feel a little brilliant.
In my first two Sociology 101 classes, I figured it would be an interesting enough class, but not anything life-changing. Our out-of-class readings, however, are pushing me to believe that, generally speaking, sociology is no subject to brush off our shoulders. We are currently talking about education reform, a subject I was not too familiar with until my acquaintance with David Brooks's The Social Animal. The novel, currently telling of the life of a young woman named Erica, goes through her brain processes as she demands acceptance into the elite Academy to save herself from her underdeveloped neighborhood, poorly run public school, and apathetic neighborhood friends. In the Academy, she learns the essential non-cognitive skills of self-discipline, self-driven determination, and self-focused ambition. The new environment of structured learning and specific rules gave her an entirely new mindset of motivational drive.
Next week's readings for Sociology ironically expanded on the points I had just read about in the novel I am so enjoying (even if it is taking me a while to finish--I'm a busy kid these days). The first excerpt on the importance of non-cognitive skills (notice I used that term a moment ago... you caught me, I didn't even know what it meant until today), explained how essential dependability, persistence, and perseverance (aforementioned "non-cognitive skills") are in a child's potential success. The studies showed that the kid with a high IQ and low self-discipline had no more success than the one beside him with a relatively lower IQ and strong nature of dependability and consistence.
In the next study, one I could relate to on a more personal level, I read about how STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) intertwined with humanities and social sciences are what create the most proactive citizen in today's world. Okay, maybe that's obvious. When we look at an individual's undergraduate education, however, we see an intense concentration on the study of the student's specifically desired career field. While this may be beneficial, I don't think the world necessarily needs "science people" or "technology people" or "english people" or "history people." We need people who are incredibly well rounded-- those whom have excelled in the liberal arts education and can succeed in all aspects of our modern world. It is, of course, important to have those who will eventually make something twice as impressive as the iPhone, something I never could have even imagined as a child, and experts to uncover more of the ancient world and allow us deeper into the lives of our earliest ancestors. I don't mean to be ambiguous here, for both types of people are a necessity in the scholarly world. But it makes me think twice about my current major.
Though I'm technically considered undeclared, I plan to create my own major in the Interdisciplinary Studies program to combine a fashion, journalism, and possibly mass media major into one. These sociologists have made me reconsider. I have always said I want to go to college to further my education, and not to learn how to do my job. I suppose a degree in fashion journalism is simply the first thing I could think of in terms of a major as I hope to become the next editor of American Vogue, but now I feel like I have a lot of big decisions to make as the person I aspire to be and as a citizen of the world.
The concept of knowing one's place in society and how the surrounding world effects his life is the idea of "sociological imagination." I will not go into detail about this simply because I was incredibly bored by it; but I loved making this connection to my first Sociology reading on the sociological imagination, because I thought the idea was rather stupid upon first glance. Once I connected it to everything else I had learned and had read in The Social Animal, I got embarrassingly excited. Everything was making sense! I'm some kind of sociological genius because I actually get it! So that was my "ah-ha" moment of my first week in college.
Back to the case of education reform, we watched a video yesterday in Soc. about the faults in the modern day education. There is no blame placed on any teacher or administrator, for our methods of assessment and measured learning seem to be imbedded in the gene pool of human kind. Our minds, however, do not learn by memorizing facts out of a text book. We do not succeed father in life because of how fast we can take a standardized test. We forget ninety percent of everything we learn for a test within a week after the test is given. Humans learn the most in groups, and we absorb information that we care about and see as important in our lives. This idea led to the speaker making a (rather hasty, in my opinion) accusation that ADHD is virtually a myth that doctors shove into parents' heads to make them think their children will make better grades, therefore becoming more successful in life, if they take a daily pill. I know many people who have been diagnosed with ADHD, most of them in dire need of something to keep them calmed down in class, but if teachers could find ways to make our education system look more applicable to life in the minds of adolescents, maybe students could pay attention without a chemical in their brain sedating them into a state of having to focus.
This entire post is scientific and weird and not at all what I am usually interested in, but maybe this is all part of my process of becoming a well-rounded student. I hope so.
Moral of the story, read books and pay attention and do your homework-- you'll realize that everything makes sense once you make an effort to make sense of it.
Next week's readings for Sociology ironically expanded on the points I had just read about in the novel I am so enjoying (even if it is taking me a while to finish--I'm a busy kid these days). The first excerpt on the importance of non-cognitive skills (notice I used that term a moment ago... you caught me, I didn't even know what it meant until today), explained how essential dependability, persistence, and perseverance (aforementioned "non-cognitive skills") are in a child's potential success. The studies showed that the kid with a high IQ and low self-discipline had no more success than the one beside him with a relatively lower IQ and strong nature of dependability and consistence.
In the next study, one I could relate to on a more personal level, I read about how STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) intertwined with humanities and social sciences are what create the most proactive citizen in today's world. Okay, maybe that's obvious. When we look at an individual's undergraduate education, however, we see an intense concentration on the study of the student's specifically desired career field. While this may be beneficial, I don't think the world necessarily needs "science people" or "technology people" or "english people" or "history people." We need people who are incredibly well rounded-- those whom have excelled in the liberal arts education and can succeed in all aspects of our modern world. It is, of course, important to have those who will eventually make something twice as impressive as the iPhone, something I never could have even imagined as a child, and experts to uncover more of the ancient world and allow us deeper into the lives of our earliest ancestors. I don't mean to be ambiguous here, for both types of people are a necessity in the scholarly world. But it makes me think twice about my current major.
Though I'm technically considered undeclared, I plan to create my own major in the Interdisciplinary Studies program to combine a fashion, journalism, and possibly mass media major into one. These sociologists have made me reconsider. I have always said I want to go to college to further my education, and not to learn how to do my job. I suppose a degree in fashion journalism is simply the first thing I could think of in terms of a major as I hope to become the next editor of American Vogue, but now I feel like I have a lot of big decisions to make as the person I aspire to be and as a citizen of the world.
The concept of knowing one's place in society and how the surrounding world effects his life is the idea of "sociological imagination." I will not go into detail about this simply because I was incredibly bored by it; but I loved making this connection to my first Sociology reading on the sociological imagination, because I thought the idea was rather stupid upon first glance. Once I connected it to everything else I had learned and had read in The Social Animal, I got embarrassingly excited. Everything was making sense! I'm some kind of sociological genius because I actually get it! So that was my "ah-ha" moment of my first week in college.
Back to the case of education reform, we watched a video yesterday in Soc. about the faults in the modern day education. There is no blame placed on any teacher or administrator, for our methods of assessment and measured learning seem to be imbedded in the gene pool of human kind. Our minds, however, do not learn by memorizing facts out of a text book. We do not succeed father in life because of how fast we can take a standardized test. We forget ninety percent of everything we learn for a test within a week after the test is given. Humans learn the most in groups, and we absorb information that we care about and see as important in our lives. This idea led to the speaker making a (rather hasty, in my opinion) accusation that ADHD is virtually a myth that doctors shove into parents' heads to make them think their children will make better grades, therefore becoming more successful in life, if they take a daily pill. I know many people who have been diagnosed with ADHD, most of them in dire need of something to keep them calmed down in class, but if teachers could find ways to make our education system look more applicable to life in the minds of adolescents, maybe students could pay attention without a chemical in their brain sedating them into a state of having to focus.
This entire post is scientific and weird and not at all what I am usually interested in, but maybe this is all part of my process of becoming a well-rounded student. I hope so.
Moral of the story, read books and pay attention and do your homework-- you'll realize that everything makes sense once you make an effort to make sense of it.
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