Personal Philosophy of Education

"The lightning spark of thought generated in the solitary mind awakens its likeness in another mind." Thomas Carlyle.

Graduate education is a collaborative journey. I see designing my degree program and making my way through it as being like sailing a small boat, where I’m not just taking in information from the surrounding environment, but reacting to it, sensitive to changing winds and promising new directions. While I’m the one ultimately responsible for getting myself where I want to be, I hope to have the guidance of others who read the sea better than I can, and know more about the boat, too.

For my graduate education to be everything it can be, I will need to master some of the skills useful to collaborators. I want to more deeply understand my developing goals in being here, so that I can communicate them and pursue them effectively. I plan to extend my trust to faculty and fellow students, recognizing their ability to navigate this process, and I hope they will extend their trust to me. I hope to let go of my ideas of how things should be, and be open to new ways of learning and engaging. I hope to be motivated by my own passion for my subjects, and my co-learner’s passions, rather than by grades, fear, or accolades. I hope to get more comfortable in uncertainty, just sitting in the chaos when necessary, while I wait for fresh insight. These are some of the things that make for great collaboration, and great education, too.

While I’ve always been a self-motivated learner, at the graduate level I look forward to finding a handful of people among the faculty and students who share my interests, and are interested in engaging in a dialogue that ideally, will further all of us. I see a graduate school as consisting of clusters of overlapping group projects, with the faculty and students taking turns guiding the educational process as appropriate. In the end I take responsibility for my own education, and know my satisfaction will depend on the depth of my own commitment. But I also look forward to sharing the journey, with professors and other students collaborating toward the shared goal of furthering each other’s mastery.