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Erin L. Aycock

Professor Roberts

Honors 140

5 September 2023

Reflection on Learning

If I was asked to describe my outlook on life in a single word, I would likely say

descriptavist. This means that I look at the world around me and report on what I find. I don’t

focus so much on how society should be run, but rather how it currently is and why. I do have

many opinions on how I would like the world to run, but I also have come to recognize that the

way I would prefer for things to run is not what the powerful and/or majority of society would

believe, and that I don’t have the energy, time, or physical ability to change their minds. Because

of this, I have little desire to directly/personally overthrow the current order of society, instead I

focus on understanding how the world works and why, so that I can share it with others who do

have the resources to effect change in the world. With regards to this unit, I found many of the

points discussed very interesting; looking at how the world thinks education should function is

interesting and each article had interesting and important issues that it addressed, however I find

the constant emphasis on how it should work instead of how does it work agitating. If this class

is about learning and critically thinking about the world around us, I think that it should focus not

just on the current debates within an issue, but also how the institution being discussed is

structured and why, because without this information one cannot fully dig into the issue and see

the full ‘educated’ picture, regardless of how one thinks society should move on from this point.
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That being said I do have many take aways about new information and points of view that I

learned throughout this unit and how I hope to impact my future success in this class.

Truthfully throughout this unit, I already felt knowledgable about most aspects we

discussed. The topics fell, for the most part, into areas that I already had background knowledge

about from either my K-12 education or my personal research. However, there was some

information that if not fully new in concept to me, was new to me in definition and detail; this

was the idea presented about boredom and creativity. Before this class, I had in the back of my

mind linked my own personal boredom with a rise in my anxiety levels, and had long attributed

this to no longer having something to focus on and distract me from my anxieties. However, it

was only after reading the article, Bored and Brilliant, that I considered that my anxieties were a

form of creativity, just not a positive one. I truly believe the idea posited in this article, about

boredom boosting and allowing creativity to run free, to be true (Zomorodi). My issue falls with

the implementation of the author’s experiment to allow creativity through purposefully allowing

boredom to occur (Zomorodi). In practice I do believe that implementing a limitation on

screen-time and social-media specifically to be beneficial in allowing boredom to occur, however

I don’t fully agree with the belief that it is important/helpful to implement this purposeful

boredom and thus allow the creativity of the mind to flow. As I mentioned in class, while for

many people allowing creativity to flow can be a good thing - allowing for the processing of

backlogged information, and finding new ways to address issues in life - for a small, but

numerabl section of our population, I do believe that it can be very dangerous. For those of us

with sever mental health issues of a wide variety, allowing this boredom can allow our extreme

traumas, anxieties, and depression to overtake our lives; it can mean that we become unable to

meet the ever important standards of functioning that society lays out for us, and that are often
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part of the system causing our multitudes of issues. I personally can attest, that when I am in a

high anxiety period in my life, allowing myself to be bored has caused me major issues; it caused

my thoughts to spiral before bed leading to insomnia and the further inability for me to keep up

with the expectations that were placed on me, which then spiked my anxiety even further and

created a visious cycle of issues that nearly ended with me being forcibly institutionalized. There

are many benefits to having creative people in the world - having better equipped work-forces,

having the ability to combat challenges easier/quicker, and finding new and efficient ways to

meet the demands of consumers - but, the benefits of creativity are not guaranteed when

prompted in all people, and can even cause great harm to individuals and society in some cases;

this is why I believe that creativity can be a good thing for individuals to have and use -

especially when talking about the expectations of an ‘educated’ person, and their ability to think

outside of the mass school of thought and reanalyze the world in new ways - it is not fair to

expect it out of people or to look down on those who can’t effectively or safely use it -

particularly when the vast majority of the American workforce does not desire that level of

creativity, but rather simple worker who can do as told efficiently and without complaint or

causing issues/disruptions for the company.

Truthfully, I did not feel particularly challenged during this unit, I already was aware of

most of these topics, and their arguments so there was little in the way of new learning

challenges for me. However, the structure of the class has led to some challenges for me; the

main issue I faced with this class, was having to read articles that I thoroughly disagreed with,

without having the my opinions on the topics shown in any capacity in class. I particularly felt

this when having to complete the Why am I in College? reading. While reading I consistently

found the piece to not only be elitist in nature, but also ableist and impractical with modern
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society’s values and requirements. I made many notes of issues I wanted to discuss further - such

as the inherent structure and purpose of modern college education being distinct from the

purpose of a true 'education' that is desired in the text (one where people are taught to question

the world around them and how they perceive it)(Garrison), and how if we want this 'education'

it would need to be new and distinct from the current college system, as the current system is

fulfilling a high demand need in our current society that cannot be simmply erased, and to

change society to the point of no longer needing to have the institution would mean that society

had changed with such upheaval that the 'education' desired would be low on a list of priorities in

resetting the societal order - but once class came, because of the need to include everyone in the

discussion and to cover the predetermined points that were planned to be discussed, I realized

that many of the issues I wanted to discuss and contemplate for further learning were not going

to be covered. This is not to say that the class structure needs to revolve around my interests and

desires, but rather I realized that to fully benefit from this class, I would need to do outside

research on my own and look into those topics that interested me but weren't covered in class. I

also realized that I would need to be more precise with choosing where and when to use my daily

limit of comments, so that I could work to bring up a select few of ideas I wanted to hear

discussed in greater detail with the class. I do recognize, that by saying I already felt

knowldgable in the topics covered in class, that I am possibly limiting myself and feeding into

my own biases, but currently I have yet to find a concrete way to address this possibility; my

current thought is that if I want to look into topics and have my beliefs challenged/expanded in

the class setting, that I should continue with my plan to carefully choose topics of high interest

that I can bring up, and to listen to other’s thoughts in greater detail while being careful to take

notes on new ideas/perspectives I gain out of each discussion. While my beliefs on the topic of
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education were not really challenged during this unit, I did face challenges in finding ways to

benefit from the materials and ideas presented in the class, by recognizing this I hope to work on

ways finding ways to benefit not only myself, but the entire class, in expanding our fields of

thought and leading to the greater ‘education’ of the class.

I know that I am going to struggle immensely with the goals I am setting forward for

myself - I have a tendency to rant about topics that interest me, but into conversations without

realizing it, and difficulty keeping my thoughts to myself - but, I do believe that overcoming

these issues will greatly benefit not only my education, but my future employability because,

while there are times to make your opinion know on an issue or take control of a discussion,

those times are not constant and one must be prepared for both sides of the situation. To make

my goals more attainable, I am going to set the achievement window at the end of the semester,

so that I have plenty of time to figure out my process and to make mistakes that I can learn from

throughout the semester. I also plan to implement extra notetaking systems to help with

catagorizing my thought before, during, and after class. Before class I plan to complete my

readings, annotate them, and create a list of a maximum of three topics that I feel I need to

discuss with the class. During class I plan to choose only one of my three pland topics to fully

bring up myself, and mention the others only if the topic is broached by others and I am still

being allowed to speak. I also plan to take detailed notes of the ideas broached in class, and

annotate these ideas with any thoughts/questions I have regarding them, that I can bring up in a

latter class or during the topic’s reflection. After class, I plan to review my in-class notes and

make a list of new thoughts I have regarding the topic, and any ways that my mind has changed

because of the readings/discussions; I’ll do this in the hopes of making my later reflections easier

for me down the road. I also plan to pull out any topics that I feel the need to do further research
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on and why, in the hopes that I can find even more new pieces of information and allow for more

changes/challeges of my world view. My goal and steps of achievement are ambitious, and likely

not to instantly work, but I hope that by the end of the semester I will have found new ways of

looking at and understanding the world, cultivated new abilities in self-restaint, and furthered my

‘education’ by implementing new skills in my learning process.

In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed this unit. I love learning, both in the memorization of

new facts, and in expanding and changing the way I understand the world. I enjoyed getting to

talk about the different thoughts regarding education that my peers had, even if I was unable to

respond in full on my countering thoughts. I did not have much broadening of world view when

talking specifically about how education works, is perceived, or possibly should work according

to the readings we covered, but I did learn about the link between boredom and creativity and

how some believe it should be valued to a higher degree than it currently is. I was challenged,

not so much by the ideas presented for discussion, but by the style/structure of the class, and

have come to realize that I need to take a greater initiative in my own path of education, and that

I can’t have the world, a day, or even a single class, fully revolve around the issues I want to

cover, when I am not the teacher/meeting leader of the session, and that others need to participate

and find value in the class as well. I have plans to work on the areas I have found challenging by

working to be more specified by what I bring to the table, and listening to the thoughts of other

in higher detail, so that I may have my own personalized reflections from what they share, that I

may then include in my later reflections for this class, and my education in general. In the end,

while I did not expect this unit to go the way it did in all aspects, I would highly recommend it be

continued and even implemented for all college students, as it works in challenging the
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standardized ways that students often go about their college lives, causing them to have some

kind of greater reflection on what they want, and what society wants out of their education.
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Works Cited

Zomorodi, Manoush. Bored and brilliant: How spacing out can unlock your most productive and
creative self. St. Martin's Press, 2017, pp. 1-13.

Garrison, Roger H. The Adventure of Learning in College: An Undergraduate Guide to