My Personal Experience: Learning Or Academic Experience

College changed me. Ok, well maybe not college in the traditional sense but, the high school Ridley College certainly did. When I told my parents that I wanted to apply to Ridley College as supposed to continuing on the route that I was on and going to my local high school something changed for them. For the first time, at least to them, I was branching out and making decisions for myself. Up until that point I had always just sort of quietly done what was expected of me and never really branched out or stepped off of the beaten path into the unknown. Yet, coming out of elementary school I was fed up with being normal. I wanted to be extraordinary and, in order for that to happen I knew that I was going to have to change things up. I

Every little mistake and success story in my high school years qualify as a factor to my personal change but by far the biggest experiences were definitely my efforts of maintaining a good GPA and the participation in the National Honor Society. Trying to achieve and keep up with my GPA was harder than it appeared but due to all the effort I can anticipate that whatever the future has in store for me I will be ready to endure. Not only was the experience of my GPA life-changing but it was also the door to bigger opportunities, one being the National Honor Society. Although I doubted myself almost every step of the way I can truthfully say the experience was transformative in the sense that it taught me morals I will cherish throughout the rest of my journey.

Starting in the fall of 2012 was a big change in my thinking and learning skills. This was the year that I started my Liberal Arts Education here at Bridgewater College. Before I entered college everything had come easy to me whether it was sports or school, but during my first two weeks at school I knew that had all changed. In high school I rarely had to take notes and homework was optional in my school district and so I carried that over to my new classes at Bridgewater. That did not go so well because on the first test in General Chemistry I got the lowest grade I had ever gotten on a test. This was where college changed for me. From then until now was a change in the way that I learned both inside and outside of class. In the classroom I started to take better notes and really paid attention to the lecture. Outside of class I started to read and take notes on the textbook and also used the resources of the college and got a tutor.

Since I was a young girl, learning was something necessary to do in order to mature into my own self. It's something us as humans do to evolve from our younger selves. From learning to talk, walk ,and read we learn many things throughout our lifetime to be the person we are today. Learning is the key to life. Learning makes us progress. Riding a bicycle was a learning experience that I might never forget it.

How has Service, Scholarship, Leadership, and Fellowship influenced my educational experience? To be truthful, these Hallmarks didn’t really register with me until my second time around in college. Before, I spent most of my time trying to find myself, or what major I wanted to be in and then finally making sure that I completed all the required classes so that I could finally earn my college degree. I was the first person to go to college in my family. I wanted to make something of myself and still do.

One of the biggest factors that changed my life is that I had joined the cross-country team. I lost so much weight and finally looked more socially attractive. It was weird to me that the person who had bullied me the year before was suddenly nice to me. It could have been she had matured and changed over the summer, however, I perceived it as being caused by my physical change in

American society values higher education. College provides many opportunities for developing a variety of social networks, both formal and informal. Obtaining a college degree will be such a valuable and

Throughout my life, I have grown up around individuals with exceptionalities. I was taught, judging other individuals is never the answer. Instead I had to learn to understand why others had different struggles growing up than me. I gained a good sense of understanding from my mom. My mother has worked in the healthcare field for the past 16 years. She has experience in managing and working in group home settings as well as assisted living programs. During this time, I have volunteered to help with various activities such as calling bingo, serving food and supplying entertainment for my mother’s residents. These experiences have helped mold me into the person I am today. Through these experiences, I gained the feeling of happiness by spending time with children and extraordinary people. More importantly, my past experiences have excited me to work in a classroom with children of different ages, backgrounds and exceptionalities.

Learning something new can be scary. One of the hardest things I had to deal with, was losing my biggest motivator. It didn’t take me a lot to be motivated, but having my aunt and seeing how successful she was made me want to do better. Coping with my aunt’s death caused me to lose hope for a while. I figured if it happened to someone as smart and head strong like my aunt, it could easily happen to me. So, I had to learn how to motivate myself to keep going after I lost her. Success is a big part of my life. So, learning to keep going was tough. Losing my aunt helped me realize life is short and to keep going no matter what.

When my mother was young and just starting in school she was told she would be nothing more than a house wife. All that I am, all of my personal and academic success all derives from this one incident. Imagine that, Imagen being young and having someone older and a respected member of the school system in your young eye tell you that you well never amount to anything more than a house wife. Why my mother was told this? The same reason I was told that it would be highly unlikely that I would ever read higher than a fifth grade reading level. My mother and I are dyslexic.

Throughout my lifelong educational experience, I have developed a self-awareness and understanding of how best I learn. My preferred learning styles are a mixture of social learning, logical learning, and hands on experience. I remember the struggles I had during primary school when my instructors taught predominantly through memorization. It was difficult for me to just simply ‘memorize’ facts or try to learn something in isolation. I needed the opportunity to build upon my prior knowledge of a topic, making connections and associations with other information, and occasionally come back for a refresher on past information. I needed a teacher who not only offered information, but instead was able to encourage linkage of information. This has shaped my own style of teaching and my emphasis on helping students first form a solid foundation of information and progressively build upon that base knowledge to achieve a deeper understanding. In this aspect, my beliefs and style align with those of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Pestalozzi believed a man learns by action and emphasized repetition following concrete observation (Brühlmeier et al., 2010). Delivering blanket information with the expectation of learners to just retain it for the future is ineffective for the majority of students. More often the information has to be fully understood and relatable to be absorbable.

Learning, it’s done in classrooms, in occupation training, and at military training facilities. There is no one place where you can have an educational experience, but there are many many ways that you can learn. Personally, I learn through conversations, experiences, and visual interactions; such as through a lesson on federalism, an activity for political parties, and when I staffed an encampment.

I regret to inform you that I am not able to brag that I have been at Peirce my whole learning experience, all eleven years of it. I went to Families Together for my two years of preschool, and started my journey at Peirce in kindergarten. I am pleased to say that Mr. Wanberg was my kindergarten teacher, although his room wasn’t as big as Ms. Fabianski's. I can still remember how we learned to count by 1’s and 10’s and 5’s, the way he taught us that “look” was spelled with two o’s (he made the o’s into eyes, and he’d ask what word was on the board. We’d all say, “Look! Look!”, and he would respond, “Where? Look where?”), and the pirate that lived in the cabinet. It was kindergarten, so addition to outdoor recess we had play time in the classroom. There were stations and to get to a station you had to grab the correlating tag before they were all taken. I remember I’d always love to go the writing station, where I’d make up stories and draw. Mr. Wanberg helped me progress in my passion to write, even as a kindergartener. At the end of the year, he gave me a book of writing prompts, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. The story goes that a man named Harris Burdick came into a publishing company with 14 titles for books, a picture and a caption for each. He told the company to contact him if they were interested in the books, but when they tried to, he never responded. The book is the 14 titles, pictures, and captions, waiting for a story to be written around them. Even to

Throughout my time here at UW Green Bay, I have learned many things about my education and about myself. While I have learned that you can get a degree, and a job, by gliding your way through classes and applying no effort, I have acquired the belief that you get out of college what you put into it. I believe that if I apply myself and try to challenge myself I will be far more successful in my educational pursuits. Through this realization, I have learned the two most important lesson of all; fearing failure is a waste of energy, and anyone can make a difference in the world.

It was early in the year of 2013 that I had thought my life would be changed forever. I was 12 years old when I first heard the news of my parents getting divorced. Devastated and in denial I had to learn that it was for the best and the last thing I would have wanted was unhappy parents. My Mother was offered a job in Charlotte, NC, where I currently live, that she couldn't pass up. When I heard that I would have to move from Akron, Ohio after completing seventh grade I was very nervous and terrified for my future. No one likes being the new kid, but to me it was almost a relief and a chance to start fresh. When we moved to Waxhaw, North Carolina I did not believe I would struggle has much as I did. The teaching and the ways they had taught their students at Cuthbertson middle had added more stress of being the new kid. I made friends fast and that's where I learned how to be outgoing. I didn't think anything could go wrong because my life was back to being balanced. When eighth year had been coming to an end and the pressure had been lifted off, my mother got the news that she could reclass me because I was not use to the learning, it felt like an enormous setback. It added much doubt to my mind and fear of what would come next. With the support of my mother alongside me and supporting me, the doubt I had about a new school began to wash away, but during this time my anxiety began to flood in. High school came around and it was never easy for me, but I learned to push