Learning as a Whole Person

This semester has been an amazing experience. In our 360, I feel like I’ve been given the space and the guidance to learn as a whole person, without boundaries, more porously. I have grown a lot since our first day in Camden, and I attribute that to the community that we created for ourselves.

Like many others, I feel like there are many things that I could have or should have said. Now that our 360 is over, I am very aware of this. If we could meet just once more, maybe we would form so many new connections. Maybe not, but there is something I wanted to share that I never really said or thanked anyone for. I figured I would do (a little of) this now.

 This year, and this semester in particular, was a huge milestone in my life. I missed out on a lot of things throughout high school because of a health condition I have that made me unable to attend school. I had one-on-one tutoring for all of my classes for five years, but I also had to quit all of my extra-curricular interests, I stopped going to camp, and essentially stopped being able to see my friends or participate in my life the ways I would otherwise choose. I took a gap year after graduating high school, and luckily was able to attend Bryn Mawr this year. I was ecstatic to jump back into a social life, and was also excited for school, but this 360 has been so much more than what I ever expected to experience in a classroom. I was not aware of how a peer discussion-oriented learning experience could effect my education; I never knew the extent of what I was missing academically through homebound tutoring. I am so grateful to our 360 for creating a learning community in which we could all learn from each other.

My participation in class discussions, in groups, and online has evolved a lot throughout the course of the semester in many ways, and for many reasons. This semester has been a very new style of learning for me. With the exception of my ESEM last semester, I have not participated in a group learning experience since middle school. It is only now that I have experienced a form of learning built around peer communication and peer learning. This took a bit of adjusting to, and still does – particularly in a full classroom setting.

At the start of the semester, I think I was focused much more on my own learning than on the learning of others. I was feeling somewhat behind on what we were talking about – like if I spent the time to formulate my own thoughts to share, I may miss something important. It did not fully occur to me until a conference with Anne that I needed to join the conversation in order to add to the learning of my fellow 360ers.

My participation in all 3 courses has been strongest in smaller group settings, but I think that my contributions to the full class dynamic have improved in the second half of the semester. I have made a conscious effort to pull in my thoughts from smaller conversations, often outside of class, and bring them into the classroom. I have also learned to take advantage of Serendip to help participate more in our dialogue-based learning. Reading and responding to Sunday posts, as well as other additional posts, has been really exciting – like a 24/7 silent discussion.

Our readings this semester have been so interesting, and I think what was most difficult was when I was unable to read everything. Many times, mostly earlier on in the semester, I would read all the readings faster than I would have liked, to make sure I read everything. This was a huge hindrance to my education. I was nervous that if I only read one reading, our class discussion would be based on the other and I would be unable to participate. I have since let go on this anxiety, often not completing all of the readings. But in doing so, I was able to be more attentive to what I did read. Perhaps there are learning experiences I missed out on as a result of not reading everything, but I think the learning experiences I did have were more powerful. Reading in the context of our 360 was really beneficial to my analytical reading skills, and I feel I have become a better reader as a result of our group discussions and our long-standing questions/themes.

Economics was equal parts interesting and frustrating for me. I feel like I have learned a lot from our course; before this semester, I had little concept of what economics was, and now I feel like I can think analytically and critically through an economic perspective. I have two major frustrations with my learning this semester. Firstly, I feel that despite this ability to think critically, I am not ‘economically literate’ enough to substantiate any claims I now have for and against the use of economics in our society. Secondly, while I think that our differing backgrounds of interest and expertise as a 360 were very beneficial to the dynamics in Jody and Anne’s classrooms, I think that it was a hindrance to our learning of economics. I found myself having trouble participating in class, mostly because I was generally prepared and fully understanding the material, so I had no questions to add. I felt that class time should be spent helping others who were having trouble to understand better, so I mostly participated only in individual pairings. I think that economics has definitely helped form my thoughts towards Eco-Literacy more fully, yet I also feel that my learning could have been pushed much farther this semester.

Education was a very engaging course for me, and has led me to re-evaluate my own learning, as well as what it means to teach. As my introduction to Education courses, the biggest challenge for me was taking our learning that focused more abstractly on teaching through readings and discussions, and trying to visualize these ideals played out in a classroom, and in other learning environments. I was unable to go to Camden for our first lesson plans, and I think this made it slightly harder for me to translate our learning into real-life teaching moments because I had not been in that situation yet. I often felt uneasy about how our hypothetical lesson plans would play out in real life, and how creating an ecological classroom would work in actuality. Our last trip to Camden was one of the most significant learning experiences for me, and though I wish I had had more opportunities to actualize our ‘teaching for ecological education’ concepts throughout the semester, I know that I will personally be able to follow through with these ideas this summer, and hopefully in more education courses in the future. I put a lot into this course, attending and preparing for class as much as I was able to at all times, and I learned and evolved so much as a result.

In English I have learned to question everything. I don’t think an English course, or perhaps any course, has pushed the way that I think all the time about everything I see and do. Our 360 did this as a whole, but I feel that English was where/when the connection felt strongest. Words – of others and my own – carry more weight than I previously thought. I see a fine line that differentiates when words tell the truth, and when words lie. Maybe we were going in circles by the end of our semester, but I think everything does and should go in circles. Re-examining, re-reading, and re-defining the world is what we do every day as students. I plan to circle through these same conversations again in new places with new people, seeing how they might lead to new and different ideas and readings of the world.

Having a creative component – or more of a creative outlet – for me this semester was really exciting. Creative projects have had very limited intersections with my academic life, and experiencing in overlap between the two worlds was amazing. I love working with my hands, but I have never before worked to create something physically that meant something to me intellectually. It has felt like a validation of my artistic interests, and I am grateful for the freedom I was given to push myself to create something meaningful. I put a great amount of time, effort, and thought into my creative components, and it has been extremely rewarding.

Oftentimes in classes, there is a particular type of learning geared towards ‘knowing things’. I think that our 360 has given something more powerful than this. I feel like I’ve learned a new way of learning, thinking, and interpreting. This new perspective of the world is something that I can keep with me more than I will ever retain Calculus formulas or Italian conjugations. I have so much to be thankful for having been part of this 360. Our individual courses have definitely sparked my interest in pursuing their separate departments, and I hope to keep each part of my academic career here at Bryn Mawr. And I know that whatever my new classes may be next semester, I know that I will be able to carry on my ‘360 thinking’ into other learning experiences at Bryn Mawr and after.