You’ll complete this assignment at the end of Week 3, October 2, 6:00 p.m. Central Standard (Minnesota) Time.
Introduction
In the field of educational psychology, there is a technique called “difference education” that encourages students to examine the ways their personal experiences differ from those of their peers’ and to see these differences as strengths.
This assignment is an exercise in difference education. The questions below will ask you to consider the experiences you’ve brought with you to Carleton that might help you in your work and life here, and then to explain how specifically you might use some of these experiences to achieve success.
Assignment
Consider the characteristics of a successful first year that you described in the “Defining Success” assignment. With this definition of “success” in mind:
1) Make a list of aspects of your personality or experience that might help you achieve success in your first year at Carleton. These might include broad categories such as your cultural background, your ethnic identity, your gender, and your socioeconomic status. It could also include more personal things, such as your academic and personal interests, your hobbies, or aspects of your personality. Your list should be at least 6 items long, but can be as long as you like.
You should have at least some sense of how each item on your list might benefit you (e.g. don’t just write “big family;” really think about how coming from a big family could be advantageous in your work and/or life at college). This is purely for your benefit, though; you won’t have to explain every item on the list as part of this assignment.
- Insert your list here
Note 1: there are obviously some aspects of your identity that might also create challenges for you at Carleton. It’s okay to acknowledge this in your response, but try to keep the emphasis on the positive side. You might consider how different cultural experiences allow you to approach your education differently, even if they create other challenges. Or, you might consider how facing a challenge that many of your peers have not encountered has given you an experience or perspective that they lack.
Note 2: Conversely, some of you might identify aspects of your identity that fall under the category of “privilege” (i.e. advantages that are unfairly or unequally distributed in a society). I won’t force you, but I strongly recommend that you include these privileges in your response. The purpose here isn’t to make you feel guilty or to determine who “deserves” to be here the most. The goal is simply to understand how your own experiences, whatever they are, can help you at Carleton.
2) Choose one of the items on your list and write at least 150 words total (roughly 1/2 of one double-spaced page) explaining it:
- What does the item mean (e.g. what, literally, do you mean by a “big family”?)
- What lessons, experiences, or skills does this item give you?
- How do you anticipate that these things might help you in college?
It’s okay if your explanation naturally touches on multiple items on the list. Try not to make this a “connect the dots” activity, though, where you mention every item on your list but barely discuss any of them. The point here is to examine one or two items on your list in some depth.
Write your explanation in a word processor or Google Doc and paste it here…
Example [please delete after you’ve completed your response]:
If I had completed this part of the assignment when I was a 1st-year college student, I might have made the following list:
1) Teacher parents
2) Youngest of five
3) Irish-Catholic background
4) Financially secure
5) First-generation parents
6) Introvert
7) Intellectual Curiosity
Explanation:
My parents are both teachers–one in K-12 and one at a university, which means that education has always been a priority in my family. Understanding how teachers think and what they want out of students has always helped to take some of the mystery out of school and made it easier to work with my teachers. For example, several of my friends growing up had a very antagonistic relationship with teachers; they saw them as the enemy and saw assignments as a set of arbitrary tasks they had to go through to get a good grade. However, my parents taught me to think about what an assignment was trying to accomplish–what skills the teacher wanted you to learn and demonstrate. They also taught me that it almost always pays to ask questions and to talk to your teacher outside of class if you’re having trouble. I expect these habits will be even more useful in college, since I’ll be spending so much less time with my teachers in class.
My parents’ background is also a big part of this: they’re both from the first generation of their families to go to college. Consequently, they recognized the sacrifices their parents’ made in order for them to get their educations, and they always stressed to my siblings and I what a privilege our educations were. I know this isn’t the same as actually being from a working-class family myself (as I noted in the list, my family has generally been financially secure, and I always assumed I’d be able to go to college if I wanted to), but keeping their example in mind will hopefully keep me from taking the opportunities ahead of me for granted.
