Making Learning Intimate

You are at university to gain knowledge and earn credentials that will offer you life enriching and career rewarding opportunities. What you learn is up to you. But whether the topic is nursing or art, all learning is intimate.  Your mind and body, experiences and interests influence and fuel the learning process.  In sort, you have a personal say in the process, progress and success of your learning. 

Think back. Remember a time when you what you learned filled a pressing need or was linked to something you held dear or deeply experienced. Such memories may include: handling the cash for the first time at work, finding your way alone through an unfamiliar neighborhood, speaking in public, parallel parking, being denied service, diapering a baby, or completing a tax return? Who can forget answering questions from a police officer or customs official for the first time?  Even the commonplace can be a mental scaffold to help you construct new understandings in academic areas such as communication, biology, criminology, engineering, psychology or business.  Looking for ways to weave relationships between the new and the known personalizes your learning and makes engaging with the ideas of others more meaningful.  If your needs can be satisfied this way, even better. If immunology can offer insight about your new allergy, if time management and financial planning help you study abroad in Italy, or if physics and physiology improves your hockey or basketball skills, your learning becomes purposeful. 

So remember, you are the one constant in your university experience. Your undergraduate career is all about developing your own perspectives and understandings, and being able to apply those in useful and creative ways to shape your life. Be a relationship builder in every class and look for opportunities to make each new learning experience intimate.