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Keith Sgrillo's picture

Conscious and Unconscious

Diversity seems to be the only constant that exisists in reality as I see it.  The diversity that exists even within the conscious and cocnitive unconscious is a diversity that has not only personal implications, but cultural as well.  The idea that so many people can see, interpret, and convey such different understandings of thier world, but come to some kind of idealism that says "we can agree" is very inspiring and motivating.  I truely like this idea we have come up with about being not wrong but different.  I feel as though this will help me as a teacher to help alieviate students' feelings of anxiety when it comes to group contributions.  But on a personal scale, it has also helped me to understand and identify some biases I have as an individual and to understand what role they may be playing in communication.  I have found that even in this short time we have spent in the institute that I have become more flexible and try to fight the urges I get to discount others' ideas and thoughts in preference for my own personal experiences and observations.  I have been more receptive and in fact welcome more of what others have come to offer than I have before.  I only hope that as time goes by I don't slip back into old rutines and fall out of practice.  I think that I have identified the idea that this will be a conscious effort in the beginning to avoid this regression back to old, hard wired practices and that I will have to work to train the unconscious.  

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