Page 15 - Learning to Learn

LEARNING TO LEARN: BECOMING A SELF -GROWER 15
EXPERIENCE 1: PERFORMING L IKE A STAR RESOURCE
Self-Growth Paper
by Cody Rivers
(used with permission)
Written at the Scholar’s Institute at Grand Valley State University, 2011
The step that is needed to be taken in order to be truly successful, not only in school, but in life
as a whole, is knowing how to learn and improve upon yourself. It is being able to take full
control over your life and being able to form yourself into the person you want to be — setting
your priorities where you want them to be, making decisions you want to make, and ultimately
becoming the person you want to become. Over the course of the past week, I have come to
understand this process which is known as being a self-grower. I have come to realize that I am
the one in control of my own life. I am in control of what motivates me.
I am also ultimately in control of how I perform and how I respond and learn from each
performance. But this step toward self-actualization did not happen all at once; it took a complete
sense of being broken down and then being remolded to teach me to think this way.
The most important transformation that came from the self-growth process is related to where
my sense of motivation comes from. In the beginning, the community as a whole was out for
the approval of the faculty and facilitators. We weren’t looking at what we wanted to get out of
the program, nor were we looking at what we wanted to learn; instead, we were looking at what
the faculty wanted out of us. We set our goals and expressed what we wanted to work on and
develop, but we deviated from our goals in order to please the faculty.
From the start of our education, we are trained to work for “the grade.” We are trained to work
to achieve a certain level of performance which is determined by another individual — a teacher,
coach, instructor, etc. —with our success or failure based on their set of standards. We took this
programmed mindset and applied it the Scholars Institute curriculum. Unfortunately, we soon
realized that this approach wouldn’t work for us due to the fact that even with our best effort,
we would still be unable to complete the tasks set before us. This resulted in an immediate sense
of failure within us. We weren’t going to be able to “pass,” let alone ace, the Scholar’s Institute
as we were so obviously accustomed to. As a result, we put an enormous amount of stress on
ourselves, converted to an unhealthy lifestyle to maintain a high level of performance, and
eventually, to some extent, crashed.
At this point, we began to analyze the situation. We decided that the process was inadequate
and what was being asked of us was ridiculous. We began to criticize the system because it
completely destroyed our sense of the “Comfort Zone.” For example, we were told we were
able to pick and choose our activities, yet we were still being encouraged to do everything. This
created an inner conflict of intrinsic achievement versus extrinsic achievement. What we slowly