Well Informed: Learning 2.0

Discussion:

Learning 2.0 when I think about it is basically the next step in our learning process wherever that lies in school, work, sports, etc. I came across this story posted by a student last semester by the name of Keshara Bjorkman and the title of her piece that I read was, “We Are Weak” and she was describing her time training at Fort Jackson. The main point about her argument was not necessarily the training itself but rather learning about herself personally distinguishing between her strengths and weaknesses. She explains that she had seen people either rise or fall according to what they are good at and she had to hold herself together to try to avoid being put down by other people based on her performance. It wasn’t only about her physical strength but also her mental state of mind too as she said it was tough coming home which is what she look forward to the most. When she was training, she didn’t want to think about going home because it seemed to make the days go by slower so she had to adapt to a certain way of living until it was over. She mentioned an example about Taylor Swift and how she is a human being just like the rest of us but as soon as she makes a mistake, everyone is all over her. The moral of her story is that we are judged constantly by our strengths and weaknesses.

Position:

Learning is a part of our lives, we are constantly learning things daily whether it is 2+2=4, a new skill in a specific sport or learning a certain position in the workplace. Whatever the case may be, we are always learning and that’s why I enjoyed this story so much is because we are always learning new things about ourselves, good or bad. It’s important when people can point out flaws in us and can help us correct it or at least bring up some awareness by it as well. Being an athlete, I tend to judge myself according to my performance. For example, if I have a good race then I feel pretty good about myself and I’ll treat myself better than if I have a terrible race, I’m most likely to be in a bad mood and just think negativity about everything from that day on. I don’t know why a person has to judge someone and make them feel harsh about themselves only to satisfy them. It doesn’t make any sense to me and quite frankly, I feel like instead of making someone look superior, I think it has the opposite effect having that person look weak because they are. A prime example of this is when a group of people jump (multiple people beat up a quantity less than them) another person. If it’s 5 on 1, and that one person is just getting demolished, why does the group feel like their superior? I never have understood that because it makes them look stupid and weak, it shouldn’t take 5 men to beat up one person. We are constantly learning things about ourselves but also other people in the process. Nobody is perfect but as long as we can fix prior mistakes we’ve made then we are making progress.