Student Teaching

            I am a student. I live to learn. I read, talk to people, go to school, and stride along New York City’s streets, all to understand neuroscience, biochemistry, medicine, cooking, history, politics, sports, opinions, everything. I want to know what makes up the universe, how an HIV vaccine might be prepared, and why people do the things they do. I want to learn be a better friend, daughter, and sister.

            Today, much of learning is consuming the plethora of information available to us via mass media. Growing up in the twenty-first century, I’ve had the opportunity to learn not only through books, telephones, newspapers, and face-to-face communication, but also through television, websites, live videos, friends’ opinions on Facebook, published online journals, Wikipedia, Twitter, podcasts, and blogs. Like most people in my generation, I use these tools to learn; they teach me what’s happening, what people think is happening, and how my own ideas fit in.

Courtesy of ASAI

            To a large degree, our opinions are shaped by media and by the folks we talk to. The tricky part is distinguishing our own values from those we’ve read about or heard. This is somewhat impossible in the digital age, but it’s important to pick out ideas that seem to have always resided in our thoughts, and yet don’t really contribute to who we are or want to be. The best part of living in a digital age is that, once we recognize those ideas, we can become producers of media. We can fight back, and give the world a chance to evaluate our ideas too. I can be a teacher.