Bruce Johansen | Improvement Through Interpersonal Connections

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My Journey to #AchieveMore

College is a Collective Colloquy The rules of this contest require 300 words on reading, writing, speaking, thinking, and feeling. After 40 years of college-level teaching and 50 books, This demands a miracle of condensation. So, from the heartland of red meat, where the school mascot is a Maverick (a beef animal with an attitude), let us take the proverbial bull by the horns. Let us begin our academic journey with two words: total engagement. Learning is a participatory event, exercised by a group of people who otherwise might not have met each other. Differing races, ages, gender identities, and political points view enrich our journey. Learning is a sharing of pain and pleasure at human level, eye to eye. We learn by sharing experience and knowledge in ways that leave no doubt at the end of the hour that we are carrying something that we care about that has improved our ability to read, write, speak, think, and feel that we didn't posses a few hours before. With all due respect to advocates of technology and budgeteers looking to shrink line items, real learning still takes place in groups, unvarnished and unmediated. Going to college is going to college – a collective colloquy of flesh-and-blood human beings face-to-face in pursuit of knowledge. We are approaching 300 words, so let's close with full disclosure: First, I stutter, worst on first meeting. In job interviews I am a total disaster. I have intense approach anxiety about public speaking. However, when I reach total engagement with students, the stuttering goes away. If I can speak in public, so can you. Second, I type with two fingers. Having something to say is what matters, so let's get started. 

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