Learning Community

My first Tuesday/Thursday classes began like this: I went to anthropology class at 11; saw some unfamiliar faces, at 12:10, trudged up 3 flights of stairs to find my inquiry class. While I waited I saw a few kids from my anthropology class waiting outside the same room. Then I realized as more people came they were all from my anthropology class. I was completely confused. When we went inside our inquiry professor asked us if we realized that our inquiry class contained the same students from our anthropology class. She then explained to us that we are a part of a learning community, and that we all had two classes (anthropology and inquiry) together. This was designed to help freshman students develop friendships and have people they were comfortable with to help work on class assignments together.

My first thoughts: wow this is stupid, it’s like we’re in high school all over again. As you may have guessed, I am not very social. It takes a while for me to make friends and I prefer to do independent work and just figure things out on my own. So I was not too thrilled about this learning community.  It took a while for the class to warm up together. And it took me longer to open up and talk.

But what really bonded us as a class was our anthropology professor. The ridiculousness of how she ran her class gave us a common bond, which we were able to vent about in our next class (inquiry). We were able to laugh, comment, express frustration about that class or assignments and everyone in the room could understand and relate. We were all going through the same thing, which helped us connect on a different level.

It also helped that the group was not cliquey and no one was a pain. Everyone was nice, friendly, and generally cool.  I don’t think I worked with the same group of people twice on discussions or projects. It was awesome that I felt comfortable going up to anyone in that class and asking if I could work with them on something. I did not have to worry about feeling intimidated or feel like I don’t want to work with a certain person because they’re lazy, or mean, or bossy. It’s very rare that you’ll find an entire class of students that are just so nice and open.

It took me a while to realize this but Mike is also in my psychology class and Ashley M is in my computer applications class. I knew no one in those classes before so if I missed any work or if I wasn’t sure when an assignment was due I was in trouble. By knowing that they are in my other classes makes in so much easier. Ashley and I would talk about how ridiculous our class is and we would ask each other when assignments are due or how to use a certain program.

Overall, I’m kind of bummed that I won’t be seeing my learning community next semester every Tuesday/Thursday. And in the beginning of the semester I couldn’t wait to get out of this “high school non-sense”. But now I realize it’s not juvenile, and it’s actually beneficial to our adjustment into college life. I hope that I’ll get to see some of these people in my next 3.5 years as an undergraduate. But if I never see any of them again I’ll always remember this great experience with such a cool learning community.