The Secret Of Learning Things : How Learning Might Interest People

More people than ever before are attending college due to the endless opportunities that it provides. Louis Menand, a college professor and the author of “Live and Learn: Why We Have College,” explains the meaning of college through three theories that have been developed. Theory 1 supports the idea of the sorting-out process that separates the highly intelligent from the less intelligent. Menand’s second theory explains that college provides opportunities for developmental growth, personal growth, and teaches individuals about the world around us. These are valuable lessons that will not be learned anywhere else. Theory three supports the idea of people attending college to specialize in a specific vocation. I

What we get out of the college experience, we use in our day to day lives. Even the things we think aren’t important or useful end up becoming helpful. The material we learn in college is fundamental when it comes jobs and life in general. We are taught to make choices. We are taught how the real world works, and how to turn our education into our way of life. “…the really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about.” (Wallace 199).

Ever since I was a young child, my parents always told me to try my best in school, they always told me this for the reason that they never had the opportunity to have a good job because they never finished school. This event is shaping me to care a lot regarding my education. In addition to that, another event that has shaped me to become the person I am today is that since my parents don’t have good paying jobs they have to work hard to take care of me and my siblings this event has caused me to become a hard working person and to seize all opportunities to live a good life because I don’t want to struggle like my parents.

College is an opportunity to truly discover who you are. Often enough, you hear people saying “You should really major in this field, I think you would really enjoy this career.” or, “Do you think you really want to study that? Have you thought about what you will be doing ten years from now?” filling your mind with self doubt, uncertainty, and the anxiousness of not knowing what you want to do with the rest of your life. Mark Edmundson wrote an article titled, Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here?, published in Oxford American addressing college students and their families how the most important thing college students should focus on is personal growth. When students take their courses seriously their engagement can help finding out who they really are and which future career will lead not necessarily to great financial success, but to a career and life that is very satisfying. Edmundson wants to inspire his audience and have them take what he is saying seriously. Edmundson uses satirical informal language and hypothetical situations to effectively persuade college students to focus on their personal growth in order to create a life and career that is deeply fulfilling.

Jaschik explains in his article, “Academically Adrift” written in 2011, the decline of learning in college and the minimal amount of expectations placed on students. The article suggests that a survey was taken amongst college students that tested their accuracy on levels of analysis and critical thinking; the results were poor. The goal of college is to improve your academic skills on a higher level. The article hints that most students take courses that fulfill the academic requirements, but are not grasping the scholarly information being presented. Jaschik uses the art of persuasion, scholarly data, and assertive emotion to persuade his audience that college fails to fulfill its primary purpose as the title suggests.

The first two chapters of “What the Best College Students Do” cover several topics. Throughout the chapters, the lives and experiences of different college students are explored. A reoccurring theme in the book is the concept of learning styles. Essentially, the three learning styles are memorization, comprehension, and strategy. According to the author, comprehension is the most effective style of learning. While everyone will possess one of these three learning styles, it is not impossible for someone to adjust to another style. Additionally, the author elaborates on academic ideas such as independence, grades, and outside influences.

What Is College For? By Gary Gutting is an analytical article upon the importance of a higher education to the public, he begins by discussing the statistics of what college has deemed worthful to people after their education. It was evident that many found it to be useful later on in life and helped them mature and grow intellectually. Gutting also points out that although many people find themselves to be successful later on after college that not everybody had the same experience, many had to drop out for the fact that a higher education was considered to be too expensive, or dropout rates too high. It is evident that he deems college to be an investment for many people who were fortunate enough to attend, therefore, providing the habits of mind of engagement, persistence, and openness to display how they play key points to the qualifying traits of a college student.

She quotes, “ Cs get degrees.” She tries to empower the reader that students don’t have any real desire to learn and are going through the motions of college. Pharinet states that the biggest challenge of college students is to convince the students to want to learn and ignite a spark. She also uses the word “freedom.” She engages the readers by convincing how time and stress management will fall short and that freedom often prevails in college failure.

When I first began college, I knew that I wanted to major in civil engineering; However, knowing that my major would take up all of my units after finishing the general education classes, I knew that I could not afford to take any extra classes, to explore and expand my own curiosity and knowledge of what is available. Instead, I decided to invest my academic career focusing on engineering. As freshman students began college, many students asked themselves that oh so common and over beaten life question “what is the point of college?,” while others wondered if it was it a place to explore and discover more about one’s self. Well now, thanks to Kwame Anthony Appiah, who teaches philosophy at N.Y.U. and wrote an article “What Is the Point of College?,” he explains two visions which are Utility U. and Utopia U. as well as the habits students possess at the start of college. As students first enter the college world they go through what is known as, Utility and/or Utopia vision; However, one vision would be stronger than the other. A Utility vision is when you want to know if you are getting a profitable return in an investment, while the same students are also act out the role of a consumer. Utility U. possess certain requirements that need to be filled and will pay for expenses in exchange for quick responses such as the desire, to be taught. Plus the fact that, Utility U. is concerned with value, echoing the idea in the section in, Utilitarians “value proposition” (appiah

My curiosity is insatiable. My mom claims that once I was a few months old, I was never satisfied unless I was completely engaged in learning. Not much has changed in the past 18 years as I have spent my life in the pursuit of knowledge. For me, learning has always been about achieving a greater understanding of the world (from the life of Elizabeth II to the neurobiology of junk food addiction) and using that understanding to try to find my place. I believe that UChicago’s philosophy about learning—which prioritizes learning how to think, challenging assumptions, and enriching the world with knowledge—aligns perfectly with my own.

College students get to analyze other subjects that they may have not shown an interest in before; that will help them construct their career. Getting the necessary skills students need, will assure their success on anything they choose to do. “It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, and a force in urging them” (Newman, 54). Education gives students a better understanding their own opinions, and judgments; it creates anxiousness in developing them, a fluency in expressing them, and a power in urging them.

Time after time you hear about going to college; whether at work, family, friends, and even when you are in high school you might have been repeatedly told of how it can benefit you in the long run in regards to your future. They say a good education can take you far in life. Students in high school may still question the importance of a college education. In the world of today people find themselves asking, “Why is it important to go to college?” An important aspect of succeeding in today’s world is getting a better education, and it’s much more than just a degree - in college you also learn how to better prepare for assignments, perhaps one of the most important things you can get out of attending

Naturally, my eagerness to learn came about at a very young age. I always wanted to know how the human body worked. Growing up in the age of YouTube, I often poured over countless hours of videos learning simple concepts that I could easily understand at that time. As I grew I was always looking to learn something new. Finally, in high school I took advantage of College Now, a program where students in high school had access to college classes on a college campus while receiving college credits. While I was there, I earned a Certificate in Computer Science from CUNY Queens College. This eagerness to learn came about of a very simple reason. My parents had high aspirations for me since no one on either side of their families had ever gone beyond a high school education. They wanted me to be the first in the family to achieve a Bachelor’s degree. Finally in 2012, I graduated from St. Johns University with a

"The more we know the world around us, the more successful we will be." This quote, from the introduction of my high school chemistry book, was my driving force as a teenager to attend college. My expectations of college were to gain insight into a world that I had not yet discovered. I had high aspirations of receiving a good education and obtaining a good job when I graduated. But four years later when graduation day arrived, I felt unfulfilled. In evaluating my education, I realized that I learned how to get good, but not great grades. I learned how to study to make the most of my time. The focus I shared with many of my peers was not always to appreciate the information received, but rather,

As Daniel J. Boorstin said, “Education is learning what you didn 't even know you didn 't know.”