Anyways, onwards to the muse:
Concentrated muse today, on a subject that has been on my mind for some time now. What with the events of my high school reunion and school field trip to my alma mater happening in the past weeks, I have been thinking about what impact these respective institutions have had on shaping me as a person/student/educated fellow. I like to think of it as assessing educational value added. This is not a new concept at all, higher ed wonks have been analyzing this concept for some time now, taking a critical eye towards what colleges actually do with those bright young people to whom they give access to their ivory towers.
Taking stock of the person I was (or I now view myself to have been), I can't say that my experience in college improved me all that much as a student. I think most of the habits, skills, and academic interests I have now remain unchanged since I graduated from high school some 5 years ago. I still write in mostly the same way, study in the same way, think in similar ways, and generally go about my intellectual business the way I did when I was a wide-eyed 18 year old coming out of high school. As a point of comparison, I think high school vastly changed the kind of student I was. In high school I was exposed to a level of academic rigor and enrichment that I had never before seen. I would say that I had to "level up" accordingly. I was taught to write (in some form or function), to think, to learn in a whole new way. Not to say that classes didn't frustrate or challenge me in college, but usually these obstacles were a function of the professor being hard to reach/too focused on research/weird to make the class as useful as it could have been. I found myself relying on the skills I learned in high school to get by in these classes, but never really needed to change the way I went about things to do well. The "leveling up" wasn't nearly as great as it was in high school.
Was/is it foolish to expect such an increase at the college level? Maybe, maybe not. I can't argue that I wasn't changed for the better through my experience in college - I met some truly amazing people, had some wonderful leadership opportunities, and matured quite a bit as a person. Is that the purpose of college though? Couldn't the same result be achieved through other means? Isn't the aim to change the way that students think and engage with the material they are presented? I am not sure of the answers to these questions, but they sure got me thinking.
So where is the educational value added, especially for someone like me who majored in a non-applied science and a liberal art? I am not convinced I am at all "smarter" for the experience. Sure, I may know more historical facts or be able to tell you how the cell cycle works (or not?), but really I learned these things from either reading a book (something I learned to do long, long ago) or a PowerPoint slide (just long ago), not from any special insight from a professor or TA. Now I don't mean to poo poo on ALL of my in-class experiences in college, Profs. Jenkins, Provencio, Gallagher, Braun, and Confino (and their respective classes) are notable exceptions. In some way their classes inspired/challenged/motivated me to be a better student and change the way I look at the world. None were Earth-shattering though. Kelly, Gullickson, Gecan, Nelson, McFaden, Lampazzi, Torrence, McCarthy... these are names that will live long in my memory, for I can trace specific ways I think about subjects (or how I try to avoid splitting my infinitives) back to these fine folks in high school.
Interested to hear what others have to think about their value added experience in college. Comments, ho!
