Theories
Dr. Jerz mentions how most studens arrive at college looking into a mirror and asking how things relate to or affect us. I know when I arrived at college I was looking into a mirror. I always asked myself how is this relating to me or how am i benefiting personally from this. It took a little while before I began to stop looking at things strictly through the mirror sense.
It is very difficult to create a opinionated paper and have it be veiewed as academically sound or factual. I have experienced this first hand when wirting papers for some of my writing classes. Teachers always tell myself and other students not to write I think, or I believe, because then the paper sounds opinonated. The readers then begin to look at the supporting arguments as strictly opinionated instead of factual arguments.
Beth Anne is completley correct in saying that theory is all about developing our own ideas. Creating a theory about something and looking further into it will help us create and help establish our ideas about subjects like poliics and other things. Looking at other peoples theories is key to establishing our views. Trying out other peopls theories will help us evaluate our own theories and either correct them or conitue on and make our own theories stronger.
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/EL250/2010/01/theory_and_games/
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Dr. Jerz mentions how most students arrive at college looking into a mirror and asking how things relate to or affect us.
A perfect example: I was in a math class last semester and someone raised their hand and asked, "When are we going to need to know this?"
"I always asked myself how is this relating to me or how am i benefiting personally from this."
I think everyone does this, just because of what society teaches us. It's not necessarily about being selfish, but more about the fact that we think we're wasting our time if we don't immediately need the information, which I think is sad.
Of course, one reason college freshmen think that way is that their high school teachers reward them for it; and the reason teachers do *that* is because that's where teenagers are, developmentally. In college, you are building on those strengths.
I was fortunate enough to have a high school English teacher who forced us to look through windows and lens. I talk about him a lot in my blog, because he's one of the reasons I've been so successful this far at SHU. I've definitely built on the strengths I had when I was an incoming freshman at SHU, but it's also apparent to me that I still have a lot of work to do.