Introduction
Education, be it formal or informal, has a huge impact on how human beings view themselves, others and life in general. Similarly, my mission, to use my abilities as a leaner as opposed to being a student in transforming my life and the lives of other people , conforms to my past educational experiences and has been affected by the present as much as it will affect my future. While most people confine learning to the process of acquiring knowledge and gaining skills in a certain field, the learning process is more of a process that brings together environmental and personal experiences (Blickley et al., 2013). Moreover, learning has an influence on an individual's way of acquiring, enhancing or modifying the existing skills, behavior, attitudes, values the world views.
Similarly, formal and informal education both broaden the spectacle with which one sees the world and provides a better outlook that enhances the determination and progress towards the individual's mission (Revans, 2017). In line with this, the experiences I have acquired within and outside the formal education system have enabled me to come up with a better mission which I believe will improve my life and enhance my interactions with the community and the world at large. This paper explains my understanding of my personal educational experiences and provides a description of how the experiences fit within my mission. I will also look at my past educational events using the third eye while attaching meaning to them in connection with the existing learning theories as they will be explained later in the paper.
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Discussion
Life is a journey of experiences. While the role of the past is to shape the present and create a path for the future, each one of us is obligated to read through the countless events, both good and bad, that are associated with our lives and our relationships with others. Only through searching for the implication of every occurrence will one be able to realize the opportunities that lie within it. My past educational experience has had a major influence on my present life and the goals that I have set for the achievement of a better future. I have been able to interact with people who have aligned their thoughts with their life expectations and people with different views towards life including those who view education differently. A look at how formal education has affected the lives of people around me after graduation has shaped my thinking about schooling, its purpose and my reasons for being in college. I have associated with people who thought of school as being the place to acquire only what the teachers have to offer without striving to acquire additional knowledge outside the classroom. In other words, my past educational experiences were about being a student without focusing on being a learner.
Owing to the events that I been part of in the past, I now think of education as a learning process and not just a system where one acquires skills that will prepare him or her for future employment opportunities. Similar to my reason for being in college, my view on the purpose of education has changed into an opportunity to acquire all-rounded knowledge that will improve one's way of dealing with different people and make it easier for the person to handle situations in a better way through proper communication, proper listening skills, and better interpersonal interactions. My thought on the societal expectation of an educated person also changed from one who is expected to have an excellent physical presentation and a better job to one being able to act differently and reveal his or her intellectual capacity through proper conduct even during difficult situations. This has affected my degree plan and its components and as they are now applicable to my ability to achieve my goals. For instance, my plan is to use my college degree in making myself better while improving other peoples' lives without having to focus on the financial gains that come with it. This is in accordance with my mission which involves using the abilities I will acquire through learning to better the lives of others.
Learning in the twenty-first century is based on transforming one's goals to conform to the daily events associated with learning. Therefore, the skills acquired in the classroom and outside the learning environment encourage the development of the core subject knowledge including systems thinking, new media literacies and interpersonal and self-reliant skills. Following this learning perspective and based on my past education experiences, I may be able to apply the skills that I have acquired in the process to my current college program. The twenty-first-century skills define math, geography, English and history as the core learning subjects. By acquiring knowledge in this, I can be knowledgeable of the current global themes including civic literacy, global awareness, financial and business literacy and use them to improve my career skills into those that will guarantee better accountability and productivity in future.
I would classify my mission before this exercise as a misplaced one as I regarded the education system as a means of acquiring knowledge that would only make one useful in the employment world without focusing on other benefits of it. This wrong belief about the education made me channel my focus on what my teachers had to offer without making an effort to acquire additional knowledge by myself. I thought of my role as being only that of a student who had to do anything to pass examinations as only grades mattered according to me then. However, my stand on the purpose of education has changed as I now believe that I am obligated to play my role not only as a student but mainly as a learner. This entails uses the learning environment to interact with others while seeking more knowledge on different fields as they all relate to each other. The result of this is my current mission statement, to use my abilities as a leaner as opposed to being a student in transforming my life and the lives of other people.
This course has inspired me and helped in changing my mindset and driving me towards better performance. I have been able to evaluate my past educational experiences and deduce how those events have influenced my thoughts, career and my place in the community. The willingness to learn has enabled me to identify the purpose of education in my life and analyze, rationalize, synthesize and come up with new ideas through the filter of past experiences. This is in accordance with andragogy theory which focuses on the learners' characteristics and how the past experiences guide an individual through the journey of learning (sandlin et al., 2013). In addition, I have changed my degree plan by identifying the wrong beliefs that had an influence on my course. According to the transformational learning theory, past life experiences stir emotions and trigger drastic changes in one's perspectives, thoughts, behavioral patterns and attitudes (Taylor, 2017). Finally, this course has involved me in experiences that have helped me change the opinion I had about my place in the community. Through experimental learning theory which identifies the stages involving concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation, I now think of myself as an individual who is obligated to use the acquired learning experience to transform others and the community as a whole (Merriam & MacKeracher, 2013).
My mission is greatly affected by my personality, passions, preferences, and proficiencies. As mentioned earlier, I view education as a system that requires me to be a learner rather than a student. The process of being a learner involves interacting with others and getting out of my comfort zone as I try to understand things outside of what I learn in the classroom. I have a great personality as I find it easy to interact with new people and adapt to new environments. Moreover, I have a great interest in meeting new people and learning new things as well as being flexible even when something is outside my list of preference. This plays a role in my mission as I will be able to acquire knowledge in different fields hence improving my interpersonal relationships and engage in interactions that will help me handle myself better and transform the lives of the people around me.
Involving myself in the discussions and readings of this class and interacting with its members has positively affected my perspective on education and the purpose of it in my life. I have been able to interact with people with different perspectives on education and came in terms with the falsehoods and beliefs I had about the educational experience and the main purpose of learning. By being exposed to the learning concepts and the factors that influence the learning process, I believe that what I have learned will help me work harder towards the realization of my goals.
Conclusion
Education has transformed from a system of preparing individuals for future employment opportunities to providing a spectacle that enhances people's perspectives and improves the lives of those around us. By focusing on the themes involved in the twenty-first century including acquiring all-rounded knowledge, we can easily develop information, media and technology skills, learning and innovation skills and life and career skills that will guarantee future productivity and responsibility. Through my past educational experiences as discussed in this paper, I have been able to come up with a better mission that will further improve my vision and help me become the person I have always wanted to be. For this goal to be realized, I will have to adopt a learning method that will support the learning of skills besides what I learn in school and involve myself in an inquiry-based collaborative work that addresses real-world issues and aims at improving other people's lives.
References
Blickley, J. L., Deiner, K., Garbach, K., Lacher, I., Meek, M. H., Porensky, L. M., ... & Schwartz, M. W. (2013). Graduate student's guide to necessary skills for nonacademic conservation careers. Conservation Biology , 27 (1), 24-34.
Merriam, S., & MacKeracher, D. (2013). The new update on adult learning theory. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education. Instructor .
Revans, R. (2017). ABC of action learning . Routledge.
Sandlin, J. A., Wright, R. R., & Clark, C. (2013). Reexamining theories of adult learning and adult development through the lenses of public pedagogy. Adult Education Quarterly , 63 (1), 3-23.
Taylor, E. W. (2017). Transformative learning theory. In Transformative Learning Meets Bildung (pp. 17-29). SensePublishers, Rotterdam.
