It’s funny that I am struggling to
come up with a “learning experience” to write about as I think back about the
last couple of months. There are so
many, and yet so few that seem important.
What I’ve figured out over the last year and a half is that tests,
grades, and shoving facts down throats somehow have become more important than
actually giving students the experience of learning. This is the exact reason that I am thankful
for my non-science classes (although they are becoming fewer and fewer as I
finish my core classes). Don’t get me
wrong; biology is awesome. I’d even
argue that it’s the most important thing to know about. It’s just that when classes become more
painful than rewarding, it’s hard to actually enjoy any type of learning
experience.
Having that said, one class in
particular has opened my mind more to other ways of thinking about life. Literature and Civilizations, as horribly
boring as it sounded when I signed up for it, has turned out to be rewarding in
the sense that I do not have to categorize everything as black or white, fact
or fiction, nucleophile or base. Instead
I’m encouraged to just think. And
believe it or not, it’s perfectly okay if what I think is not the same thing as
what the person next to me thinks. There
is no right or wrong, but instead we discuss relevant issues that make a
difference in the world.
Specifically, I want to write about
a recent learning experience in that class that concerns Henry David
Thoreau. First I learned the irritating
fact that his name was originally David Henry and I was ready to throw in the
towel just because of that. Reading
parts (and thankfully not all) of Walden was an interesting experience because
it made me think about the world from a different point of view, even if it was
only for a few minutes at a time as I read it or as we discussed it. Thoreau talked about living a simple,
thoughtful, and “deliberate” life free of distractions. He encouraged people to be themselves, and
not simply conform to society without questioning why you are who you are or
why you are doing what you are doing.
Although I can’t say that everything he suggested we do is something I
agree with, he did have thought-provoking points, which really was the reason
he wrote anything in the first place. For
example, he makes a point that he cannot stay where he is any longer because he
has many more lives to live. Everywhere
else I’ve heard you only have one life, you only live once (YOLO), and you
better live it up, but Thoreau throws out the idea of living many lives in a
lifetime by continuing to change and not getting stuck in a rut. Not a life changing thought for me at this
point in my life, but still an interesting thought to ponder. Reading parts of
Walden was eye opening and thought provoking, and even though it did not change
the way I view life it is still an important learning experience.
Learning experiences such as this
are not typical as a Biology major, so I think that it is important to have
these types of classes that teach people how to think about everyday life and
remember that the world isn’t always black and white.
