I want to join some clubs that I think that I might be interested in, so that maybe I can find some friends that have similar interests. Also, I want to try new things that I may not have had experience in before, to expand my horizons on the front of interests. This would fit into the idea of cultural citizenship, which is mentioned in the Scheuer article. In this, he says that “the overall goal is to foster vibrant and prosperous communities with broad and deep participation…”(pg 4). I know that when I graduate college, I want to be able to say that I was active in the community that I spent four years in. The years of college are meant to be some of the greatest years of my life, where I learn new things and meet new people who may become my friends for life. Although it is off to a rough start, I still want to make it my goal to find new things that interest me or maybe even pick up some old ones that I had left behind.
Academic Goal:
I want to be able to figure out what I want my major to be. I want to be able to somewhat confidently say that I would like going into a certain field. This connects to the Bain article where he discussed how people choose what major they want to go into from their liberal arts education. “They found what fascinated them.”(pg 203). I realized that I want that for myself. I want to do something that I am passionate about. Too often I hear about people who are caught in a dead end job and have nowhere to go. Bain also stated that “a liberal arts education afforded them the chance to enjoy a richer life because they could get more out of every moment and every experience.”(pg 204). Although I am undecided, and I am not really sure what I want to do for most of my life, I hope that by getting a liberal education I can experience what Bain showed in the article.
While updating my goal table, I found it difficult to add from Bain to a lot of my goals, but the ones I did seemed like they fit just right. I think that having this table is a good visual for me, and who knows, maybe I will think of something inspirational from our discussions. But overall, I found it easier to add to existing ideas than to come up with new ones, but I guess that is true a lot of the time. I think this table will help to motivate me in the future.
“They have few notions about what the whole tradition of liberal education entails, except for some vague sense that it’s ‘good for students to be well-rounded.’” I chose this quote because it really resonated with me in the sense that before I started my classes at UNE, I also really didn’t know what liberal arts meant in terms of my education. All that I really knew was that it was so the student was exposed to all major subjects, but I never knew why it was like that or what we were expected to gain from it. I also think that maybe if more people were educated as to what this kind of education is all about, then they wouldn’t have such a distasteful notion if it. I am glad that I now have a better understanding of what a liberal arts education actually means and how it helps in everyday life. This also connects to Scheueur in that he specifically describes the importance of the liberal arts in any chosen discipline, stating that “free minds are flexible minds”. This further demonstrates how although many people don’t know much about the liberal arts, some knowledge in how it helps people in the future could change that perspective of uselessness.
Liberal Arts and Creativity: 2
“The subjects in our study didn’t just sit around expounding on the value of creativity. They found something that fascinated them. They became interested in problems they could solve, in work that they could do.” I chose this quote because it disproves the idea that many people have about the liberal arts. Many believe that liberal arts is just a fancy term for someone who gets a degree for the arts, and can only be a limited number of things, like a historian or an artist. This shows that even though all of these people went into a liberal arts program, they all found something that they enjoyed doing in widely varying fields. When they found their passion, they could use the skills that they had acquired from their varying range of study and apply it to the problems in their field. With this knowledge, they could approach problems in ways that they may not have thought of before.
Engage With History and Justice: 3
“They reject or accept arguments not out of personal whim but because they have engaged in the highest rational judgements. A liberal education helps them develop the ability to do that reflective thinking.” This quote connects directly with the Scheuer article in the “What Is Critical Thinking” section, it says that students who engage in critical thinking “venerate truth, for example, while recognizing that there are different types and degrees of truth, some more elusive or impermanent than others.” Both this quote and the one from Bain show that critical thinkers recognize that there are many different versions of “truth”, but just because it is from someone else’s view, that doesn’t mean they are completely false. Stories and history get twisted often enough that two people who lived through the same event may very well have different recollections of it, and that is okay, it is what being human is. Everyone has their own lens through which they view the world, and that is what the texts recognize.
Freedom To Choose:
“Researchers at the school recently compared the two groups and found that on a wide variety of measures the liberal arts students did just as well or better than students who didn’t necessarily pursue that broad undergraduate education.” This quote connects to Ungar’s article under the second misperception that a liberal arts degree is not worth as much as others. In it, it says that “a 2009 survey for the Association of American Colleges and Universities actually found that more than three-quarters of our nation’s employers recommend that college bound students pursue a ‘liberal education.’” Both of these quotes demonstrate how more and more people are realizing the utility of having a liberal arts education and how versatile it really is. This kind of education broadens a student’s mind and gives them the ability to look at problems in new and creative ways that they may not have been able to think of if they didn’t have that kind of education.
Selecting A Path:
“In his mind his intelligence and personality are not frozen in place but constantly evolving, permanently changed by everything he learns. ‘You think of yourself differently,’ he said, ‘if you have mastered something. You realize that you are separate, you are different. You have been empowered in a special way.’” I chose this quote because I know that when I had continued my French classes for six years, and I got to the highest class my high school offered, I was incredibly proud of myself. This distinction that only a few other people were in this class with me and had dedicated themselves this much really did make me feel different than the majority, and I really enjoyed that. It boosted my self-esteem and made me happier overall, even if I didn’t always enjoy the work that went into it.
While attempting to write my goals, I found it especially difficult to create goals that were specific enough to be achievable, but also broad enough to be able to be carried out over a period of time. I also found it hard to come up with more long-term goals, because I haven’t really taken time for myself to think about what I actually want for these categories in my life. After some research, I had some success in setting well-thought out goals that I can actually work towards and achieve. I definitely think that one of the hardest parts of this for me was to give myself enough information so that I could actually follow through on my goals.
