9V Critical Thinking

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In my own words critical thinking is digging deeper and finding out what the real meaning is. Its important to have this skill because it gets your mind working and analyzing different things from different views.

More Vocab

Benevolent: showing or motivated by sympathy and understanding and generosity

Hypothesis: a tentative insight into the natural world; a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena

9I Puppies at Southern!

This week we had dogs of all different breeds visit Southern. They were therapy dogs and students signed in to pet them, play with them, and get to know them. All of them were with their owners, which was helpful because you got to ask specific questions about the dog and its breed. This event was held in the basement of Farnham Hall. My friend and I had went and stayed for about an hour. We went around to all the dogs and sat with each of them for a few minutes. I found it really fun; it definitely made me miss my dog back home!

9B Midterm Grades

This week we received our midterm grades for each of our courses. I was happy with the results but I wish some of them were better. I’ll admit I slacked off a lot in high school, so its ben a struggle keeping up with all my work here. What I find most difficult is not actually being told what to do and having to figure out when to do things on my own. I think I’ve been doing a pretty good job so far my grades aren’t bad at all. My goal is to get all A’s which I don’t have thus far, so this last half of the semester I need to figure out what I need to do to accomplish my goal.

            One thing I’ve been proud of myself for is my test grades. In just about all my classes I’ve been doing fairly well on my test and quizzes, which was one of my biggest struggles in high school. Another thing I’ve been successful at is getting all my work done on time, it’s not always easy with so much going on but it always gets done. My hardest class is math; I’ve always had a difficult time in this subject. I find what helps me is too keep doing problems over and over again. Another thing I need to do is go to my math professor and talk to her one on one for help. I think if I were to this it would help my understanding so much more.

            Overall, I’m pretty happy with my midterm grades and they are what I expected them to be. Like I said my goal is to get all A’s, which means I need to work much harder for that to happen. To reach this goal I need to do a few things. First, I need to find a place to study where all my focus is on my work. Second, I need to make use of my professor’s office hours, I’ve never gone to anyone’s office hours before and I really want to change that. Third, I need to study more, on average I spend abut 20 hours week on homework an I know if I were to raise that number it could possibly raise my grades as well.

9A What's it like to be a Critical Thinker

Since the beginning of school I have been doing a lot of critical thinking in all my classes. It was a new concept to me and still is because in high school we didn’t do much of it. Critical thinking is analyzing things and going more into depth to find the deeper meaning. In order to find the deeper meaning you need to apply your own knowledge, evaluate and gather information, and do a lot of analyzing and reflecting. Critical thinking is an important skill to have. Is requires time and focus but it really helps to get your mind thinking in different perspectives, which will allow you to further your understanding upon things.

Thinking critically takes more time but it really does help your understanding. To think critically you need to break things down. For example if we were to think critically about this question, this is what we would do…

Why must every incoming freshman take an inquiry course?

Instead of just saying because its one of the requirements to get to the next tier you would analyze this question, like this…

I think students need to take this course because it’s about how to deal with college through your first year. It helps you find ways to deal with problems all freshman face. Like studying skills and habits, also things like social skills and how to get involved.

This is just an example; you could evaluate and analyze this question much further. But all in all it shows that by critical thinking you do take your thinking to a new level. Which includes looking at different perspectives. I have been applying critical thinking skills to almost all my courses. It’s a very good skill to have since it helps you get more engaged to what your talking about. You can never over analyze something but you can always look at things from different viewpoints.

Final Draft Midterm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZSBBdlzwsw

8V Mastery

This week’s vocab is mastery. Mastery is comprehensive knowledge or skill in a subject or accomplishment. In my own words I would say mastery is something you have practiced for years. In class we talked about how most people aren’t experts or masters at something unless they’ve done it for ten years. To master something not only do you need to practice, you need to focus on what your weaknesses are and try and improve those, which is deliberative practice.

More Vocab:

Divergent: is moving away from what is expected. Two divergent paths are moving in opposite directions away from each other

Compassion: a deep awareness of and sympathy for another's suffering