College, knowledge and experimental learning

One of the options that we are given our senior year of high school is whether we want to go to college or not. This can be overwhelming because it’s such an important decision to make at such an early age. Some people believe that they will have the ideal life they have always wanted if they don’t go to college, but for the rest of us, college is necessary in order to attain this major goal. Right when we think that we are done with making important choices when we realize that the next step is to pick a major. What I realized after reading “The Idea of a University” is that no matter what we major in, we’re still attaining an education. “I have said that all branches of knowledge are connected together, because the subject-matter of knowledge is intimately united itself,” wrote Newman (165).

I decided to come to college because I want to somehow give something back to my mother, because I want to have a better life, because I want to help others and to experience everything a university like this has to offer. To some people these reasons may not be good enough reasons, but they mean everything to me. It doesn’t matter why we’re all here because in the end all that matters is the education we attain while we’re here. “Men, whose minds are possessed with some one object (education in our case), take exaggerated view of importance, and a feverish in the pursuit of it, make it the measure of things which are utterly foreign to it, and {138} are startled and despond if it happens to fail them…Those one the other hand who have no object or principle whatever to hold by, lose their way, every step they take” (168).

The knowledge that is learned in a university doesn’t compare to the knowledge that is learned outside. By this statement, I’m saying that only university education “…gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them” (170).

Experiential learning is a way in which many of us prefer to learn. This technique allows us to experience knowledge firsthand. In the text (page 184) it says that experimental learning makes both sides of our brain work and it also allows us to learn from our own point of view instead learning form someone’s point of view who we don’t even know sometimes like the authors of our books. I’ve learned that experimental learning engages us more in learning and it encourages us to want to learn more. “Experimental learning is considered more meaningful because it allows students to practice roles unfamiliar to them and fully immerse themselves in experience that generate authentic knowledge” (184).

Links?

http://attractions.uptake.com/blog/files/2009/01/uttower.jpg
http://candliciouscreations.com/myPictures/Texas+UT+Longhorn.jpg
http://www.123collegedegree.com/images/jaxairnewsarticle1.png
http://openreflections.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/knowledge-eye-chart-by-choconancy1.jpg