Reflect on the three
key lessons you take away from the course. Reflect on your perceived value of
this course. Include both positive and negative aspects of your experience.
What might you have done to improve your learning experience? How might the University
or your instructor provide additional support for your learning? Were there
topics covered that seem particularly relevant or irrelevant to your
experiences and to what you expect to come in future courses?
The first
key lesson I have taken away from this course is not to judge a book by its
cover. While discussing the ethics of our choices I have learned that there are
so many people in the world from so many walks of life and it is unfair to
judge anyone by what they may look like from the outside or how they may act. While
I knew that society and social status played a role in the façade some of us put
forward, I don’t think I ever realized how much of that really impacted the
decisions that we made and why. The stories my classmates shared on their
personal experiences as well as our reading of Marilee Jones really made me think
about the pressures of society and how we work to conform to the parameters of
what society views as successful, beautiful, good, or bad. I learned that the
decisions we make sometimes have nothing to do with what we are feeling or thinking
but make actions based on how society thinks we should acting or feeling.
Another
lesson I have learned is that moral decisions are not as easy to make as some
of us may have thought prior to this course. We were each placed into difficult
decision making processes where the outcomes were not favorable in any
situation and had to make calls on what we do. I found that some of the
decisions I made were to benefit my family and I and despite the good I had in
my heart to do good for others, I would put my family before anyone else. I
learned that sometimes decisions you don’t want to make are put before you and
the consequences of some of those decisions may sometimes be difficult to live
with as it can test your character and integrity.
The
last big lesson I have learned is that I can always be a better version of
myself if I always do my best to be virtuous and true to who I am and who I
want to be. I believe that I am a good person at heart and while I can be a
little rough around the edges sometimes, it is more because of the way that I
grew up than the way that I would truly like to be. I learned that your experiences
growing up and the lessons that you learned and were taught are what shape you
to act in certain manners and sometimes it can take many years before those
feelings can be undone. I thought that Ben Franklin’s 13 virtuous were a great
way to set precedence for myself to act in the way I wanted to act rather than
the way I felt I should act because of the positive or negative experiences that
befell me growing up. I now think that having something like the 13 virtues is
good to have as it allows me to challenge myself to meet the criteria of who I
want to be without all the other pressures of, religion, status and society
trying to tell me how I should be. It allows me to make my own rules and goals
and not have to meet any that have already been set for me.
To
improve my learning experience I believe that I have to make myself more open
to others and do more charities and fundraisers to help those less privileged than
I am. I believe that giving my time and energy to others will help to educate
me on the difficulties others are experiencing all over the world and how I can
do my part to help them. I think that a good way for our instructors to help
with this is to give us a charitable assignment. For instance, instead of
researching a paper on ethics or writing about the hardships others may
encounter, I think students could learn much more by being asked to take action.
If I were an instructor
I would create an assignment asking that each student take an ethical action
for that week. It could be anything from volunteering at a homeless shelter,
providing food to a food bank or clothes to the Salvation Army, or anything
that we could do to help society or become more virtuous in our ways. I think
that if possible, some of the assignments should include pictures or videos of
what we encountered and how the experience has changed us. When we write papers
we tend to feel the restrictions of the APA format and having to be politically
correct in what we are saying or writing. Pictures and videos don’t do that.
They allow for freedom of expression, and as they say a picture can speak a
thousand words. I think that a visual collage of our actions may be a better way
of expressing the experience a collage like that could create for someone, rather
than just another written assignment. I think we can become a bit more creative
with the assignments that we give our students so they are better challenged to
instill change in themselves as well as others.
I think that many of
the lessons I have learned have been relevant to my everyday life as they have
made me think and rethink about past decisions and what I can do in the future
to ensure that I am living the life I want for my family and I . I have always
done my best to be a good person and make good decisions, but after this
course, I wanted to challenge myself to be that much better. I believe that incorporating
knowledge of others circumstances and culture will help me to see how blessed I
truly am in what I have, rather than always concentrating on what I don’t have.
I know now that life is what you make
of it and not what society or others believe you should make of it.
Cassandra R.
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