What Makes an Expert?
I have definitely been a strategic learner throughout most of my academic experience. In high school and middle school, plus even before then, I remember being obsessed with getting good grades. I wanted to get the best test scores and grades so that I could show them off and prove I was smart. I relied on them for personal validation. In elementary school I wanted the best scores on tests and projects so I could show off to my classmates. In high school I learned that colleges only see your semester grades, not individual grades. I suddenly didn’t care much for individual exam/project grades, except for how they would affect my overall grade. I would calculate what the lowest possible score I could get on an upcoming exam was, in order to still keep my letter grade for the class. While I was taking an exam, I would mark every question that I wasn’t 100% certain on. I would then calculate what the lowest score I could’ve gotten was, assuming that I got all those “unsure questions” wrong. I would then plug that score into my overall grades and see the effect it had. I was so obsessed with grades that I couldn’t even wait the two or three days for my teacher to grade my exam— I wanted to have an idea of my score right after I finished taking it.
I remember when I was in fourth grade and I heard about there being a weekly club after school that was purely for science experiments. I was so excited that I signed up right away. At that point, I had never done science experiments before, and I was thrilled to learn something new. Visions of people wearing lab coats and holding flasks with bright bubbling liquids in them flooded through my imagination. I couldn’t wait to be doing something new. When the club started and we did our first experiments, I would wonder why each experiment worked the way it did. When I got home I would repeat the experiment for my family and explain why it was happening. This was a time when I felt like I was a true deeper learner who was excited about learning. The club was not a grade and it added on extra time at the end of the school day. If I had that option in high school, I would’ve never signed up. Yet in elementary school, it was the thing I couldn’t wait for every week. What happened to that excitement over the years?
2 thoughts on “What Makes an Expert?”
I really like how you reflected on the times where you were a strategic learner and how you are able to understand why. I also enjoyed reading the growth of how at some point you considered yourself to be a deep learner when it came to the science experiments in elementary school. I suggest that you add some quotes from the text stating what a strategic learner/deep learner is, so you are able to give more context to how you are describing yourself.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Molly. Your strategic learning moved into strategic thinking in terms of calculating grades. Some might argue that this method is thoughtful in that you are deciding how to manage your time and effort, and it is efficient in that purpose. As we continue through this project, consider the weight of working only for the grade. It’s a hard habit to break, but I hope you will invest to reach the benefits of deep thinking by pushing yourself to focus off the grade and into the learning and perhaps regain some of the joy of discovery as you did when you were in the science club.