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Victoria Rielly
Freshman Inquiry
MacCormack
December 11th 2014
Fall Portfolio
Part 1
The goals of this program are mainly to enhance students' communication abilities, teach them
how to think, reason, and question things that they wouldn't have considered before, and to create a
safe and interesting community. Having book knowledge isn't all that's required to survive in this
increasingly complex world. Now students have to think more about their responsibilities, what it
means to be a good or bad citizen, and how to relate to other people who may not necessarily be in their
immediate social group. This class and program in general is designed to get people thinking and
hopefully understanding more about the world and themselves.
Communication: This is not only about furthering public speaking and writing skills, but also
will diversify the audience a student has to present their work to and interact with.
Critical Thinking and Inquiry: High school teaches lots of basic critical thinking skills, but this
should force students to take those skills to a new level with higher expectations.
Variety of Human Experience: People are complex, this goal likely relates to how students can
identify and overcome differences, realize the potential each person has for being a good or bad
influence on them, and also learning how to connect with people who may be very different.
Social and Ethical Responsibility: This is a tricky one because everyone has some sort of
obligation or responsibility for how to treat each other or society, but nobody can really force a single
standard on them. It's more of something that has to be self-discovered, and this goal has to do with
leading students to that moment of discovery.

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Part 2

Original Assignment:

Most of you have posted something on the film "The Class". Since then we've finished the film,
read Frederick Douglas, Freire and a piece about the Indian Boarding Schools, had discussions about
the readings and the economic advantages stemming from a college education, and watched an
animation lambasting traditional education and ADHD medication.
Pause for a bit and consider all these pieces. Try and make some connections. Think about them
critically i.e. what parts seem legitimate, what seems off, and why. Agree, disagree, but provide us with
your reasoning. What is education doing to students? What is it supposed to accomplish? For whom?
You can draw from the films, the readings, your personal experiences etc. In the spirit of Paulo, I'll not
ask for any particular length, but I would like to learn from your responses.

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The Problem with Banking Education:

The concept of 'banking education' floated by Freire basically states that students are treated as
receptacles, and teachers throw information at them. The more 'filled' the students are, the more
successful a teacher is considered. Though this seems like a flawed system from the start, it is sadly the
way some kids are forced to learn in this and other countries.
The alternative to banking education involves more question-and-answer, and problem solving on the
part of the students. Instead of a one-way flow of information, teachers and students can have a
dialogue.
In the short animated video we saw in class, I noticed a lot of good points were brought up,
especially those about how students are separated by age. The idea of separating a class by age (and
nothing else) relates closely to the idea of banking education. Everything has to be uniform, everyone
gets the same slew of information tossed at them, everyone follows the same system. I disagree with
both concepts.
As far as age goes, in high school, one of my friends was a 14-year-old senior. I myself
graduated at 16. Some students in my school were teen parents, and were graduating a year late. Being
in a senior class with these people did not hinder my education in the slightest, and actually made for
more interesting conversation, input, and most important of all, a good dialogue.
This is only one out of many of the points from the video that relates to the banking education
concept, I could probably go on for a while about the flaws in the education system, but it's easier just
to say that the banking concept, and all ideas associated with it, should be used in moderation, or in
some cases not at all.

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Reflection:

This assignment conjured thoughts about the variety of human experience the most, this is
because I took a moment to consider how many people have not been exposed to the same diversity I
had in an online school experience. For the most part, cliques in a traditional high school are very
secluded from one another, and hardly interact. In my school we didn't know what type of person we
were talking to until the conversation was already well underway. The interactions may have been a
little forced and awkward, but they did broaden my view of people and help me understand how even
students of entirely different background could still be interesting to talk to, even if the only thing we
had in common were the lessons completed for school. This assignment didn't introduce any entirely
new information towards this goal, but it did make me reconsider the existing information in a new
way.

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Original Assignment:

How conscious were you about social class before we brought up the issue in Human/Nature?
Were you aware of it in your neighborhood, your school, in society in general?

Now that we raise the issue, think about it. Have you seen evidence of social class operating
around you? How have you experienced it: in the attitudes and actions of others towards you, in
your attitudes and actions towards others, in the interplay you observe between people around
you? Describe a specific situation where class was clearly involved.

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My Experience:

I've always been aware of some sort of social class, however it became much more obvious as
my family moved. This happened six years ago, when our mobile home park in Beaverton was sold to
an apartment company. Our community was very secluded, all the houses cost a similar amount, the
average income was what would be considered upper-middle class. Suddenly, we had to relocate. In
looking for a new property we considered everything from a three acre farm, to a floodplain, to postage
stamp lots in the city.
We finally decided on moving to a small lot in the city of Forest Grove. Upon moving here I
noticed an immediate difference between my family and the surrounding neighbors. Our house is the
biggest on the block, we also have a landscaped garden and full garage. In comparison, some of our
neighbors park trucks in their front lawn, have small older-style houses, and seemed wary of us when
we first moved in. It's not that we don't get along, we do very well, but it's impossible to ignore the
difference between how our separate households act and spend their money.
As mentioned before, our neighbors did seem a bit wary of us while we moved everything in,
they weren't outwardly rude, but did ask me a few odd and awkward questions such as 'Are you guys
tree-huggers?' after I mentioned we didn't eat meat and 'Is your dad a hippie?' after noticing he has
longer hair. However, nothing can really be helped about this curiosity, and I'm guilty of wondering
similar things about our neighbors and their activities, so I haven't had any drastic experiences with
social class, but also can't pretend it doesn't exist.

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Reflection 2:
This related most to communication and human experience. The event itself was really my first
instance in communicating with someone so far outside my usual range of conversation. There were
lots of surprises in store as I got to know these neighbors, lots of things about their experience and
culture that I could barely even grasp the idea of. So while I did learn and reflect on human experience
here, it is also an example of how a younger me learned to communicate, and relates to current me
because now I'm faced with a similar situation. College is full of people I would have never interacted
with before, but I am now surrounded by. From revisiting the first time this happened, I can apply some
of the same techniques to my current communication dilemma and hopefully learn better how to
effectively interact with people who are from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities.

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Original Assignment:

For all of us, our awareness of the world is mediated by our senses. Based on the Secrets of the Mind
program and the readings of the past weeks, you should now understand that our conscious awareness
is not a simple reflection of the external reality. We rely on specific senses with their limitations and
strengths. We focus on only a small portion of the incoming sensory information, editing and ignoring
much, while also unconsciously filling in the blanks, and connecting the dots. We also know that
prior experience, social myths, and emotional states influence our perceptions. We become aware of
these processes when they result in some misperception that we can detect, but most of the time these
mechanisms are helping us function without our ever noticing them.
Your assignment today is to find a quiet natural setting and spend some time observing your
perception processes. Take a notebook and draw a line down the middle of several pages. Now make
yourself comfortable on a park bench or similar place. (Pick someplace outside that you might return to
at a future date for additionalobservations) Now, for a ten minute period, try and record on the left
hand side of the pages what you experience. You may need mentally to take a step back, but dont fall
into the endless loop of watching yourself watching yourself watching yourself. What are you aware of
around you? Dont deliberately concentrate on experiencing everything, but try and make note of
sensations and your stream of awareness. Which of your senses enter your awareness? How does your
focus change and shift? Is your mind assigning meaning?

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Assignment 3:
Observation Essay
It was hard to think of a starting point for the observation exercise, so I ended up zeroing in on
the most loud and obnoxious thing that was happening at the time. Noisy crows took up a good portion
of my observation, I even recalled a time earlier in the day where I saw three or four of the big black
birds fighting over a plastic-wrapped taco that had been discarded in the street. They were fighting each
other, the passing cars, and the plastic wrapper to get at the food when a fat seagull swooped in and
claimed the prize. The fight might have continued, but I was walking and had to turn the corner, so the
results will always remain a mystery to me.
I was sitting in a mostly deserted area of the park blocks, as close to nature as you can get in
this area without having to drive or take transit. I'm assuming most people were either trapped in class
or eating lunch, since it was about that time of day. A few people wandered by, one making me think of
a multiplayer online game. It's called League of Legends, and something in the woman's appearance
and attitude reminded me of one of the main characters. From here I recalled that I hadn't played in a
while due to laptop troubles. I made a mental note to get these computer issues fixed soon, and put
aside some time to catch up on games and relax.
After planning out some much-needed game time over the weekend, I immediately jumped
back to thinking about my surroundings. The weather had started to change, from mildly warm and
pleasant to a bit more breezy and dark. The coldness on my neck made me remember an absent scarf,
note exactly where I had left it at home, and then go on to accuse it for being useless. I'm not sure why
that came up, especially since it was my fault for forgetting it, and it's not like the scarf could take the
blame, or blaming the missing scarf would do anyone any good. Complaining would not magically
conjure it from my desk chair to my neck, so maybe instead of the scarf being useless, this train of
thought was the real useless one here.
With that finished, I went back to the main focus, scenery. This time specifically the flowers.
They made me think immediately of the roses my mom grows at home, and how these roses aren't as
pretty. It makes sense to relate these new foreign roses that I had never seen before to roses that were
more familiar. It also makes sense that I was comparing them, because that's what usually happens
when two different-yet-similar objects collide in the mind. I find myself comparing people to video
games, crows to other crows, flowers to one another, and the current weather to what it was five
minutes ago.
This seems to be a theme with my trains of thought, all of them center around comparisons and
relating the new observational information to existing information. This is apparently how my brain
works, gathering all existing data then going on to compare it and decide what outcome is better, more
favorable, or generally positive. However I've noticed that the calculations of what's better always
comes more quickly when the information is rather useless. Crows, flowers, pixels on a screen, none of
these really matter, so it's interesting and also a little frustrating that I can so easily make sense of these
inconsequential things, but when faced with a bigger problem it can take ages to make a thorough
investigation and come up with a decision.

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Reflection 3:
While I didn't follow the assignment to the letter, this observation taught me a lot about critical
thinking, focus, and how my brain categorizes the information it absorbs. This is one of the goals that I
feel I'm lacking in, so hopefully through more observation and reflection projects I will discover more
useful methods for becoming a well-rounded thinker. Focus is also something I struggle with, but this
exercise helped on that front as well.

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Part 3:
Final Reflection:
This first semester of college has undoubtedly changed me, but maybe not in the way I expected
it to. So far I've been able to build on a few skills from high school, mainly communication and critical
thinking, but feel that I need to branch out further. This will hopefully happen over the next few
semesters or years of college. So far I'm off to a good start in realizing two of the four University
Studies goals, especially communication through our group presentation, being forced to speak in front
of the class, and generally voicing my opinions more often.
One thing that is lacking, however, is a sense of community with other students. We don't
interact enough in or out of class, and there haven't been any good team-building exercises. The point
is, I can work fine with almost anyone in the class if forced, but that's not really the 'community' I was
hoping for. Maybe I'm the only one who feels like this is lacking, I'm not exactly a social person by
nature, but I still hope there is a stronger sense of togetherness going into the next two terms.
So far I have become a stronger thinker, and have also become introduced to more diverse
people and situations. This is likely my most significant progress towards any of the goals, and most of
it came from the reading material, in-class movies and small group discussions. Plato's Allegory of the
Cave was one of the most interesting to me, and made me consider how it would feel to be an outsider
looking in on this whole learning process. Thinking of it in this way made me better understand the
process itself, and also began the long process of determining where and who I want to be after I
graduate. The rest of University Studies can only get me closer to answering that question and I look
forward to it.