As young adults in college we learn many tools that we will use and take back out into the world. Among these tools, the most important is independence.
Independence means losing the training wheels that mentors have given students, and using the information they have provided them to create a life. Mentors guide college students into becoming the adults they will be one day. Even though students may not be independent while they are receiving help from mentors, mentors give the students the ability and confidence to eventually be on their own. Mike Rose who had the help of mentors explains,
You’ll need people to guide you into conversations that seem foreign and threatening. You’ll need models, lots of them to show you how to get at what you don’t know. You’ll need people to help you center yourself in your own developing ideas. You’ll need people to watch out for you. (100)
Basically, Rose is saying that students need an example of a person who is already independent. A mentor who can hold their hand now, but will eventually let it go, so the student can go out into the world with their new found independence. College students should realize that it is okay to ask for help. Rose sates, “We live in America with so many platitudes about motivation and self-reliance and individualism-and myths spun from them, like those of Horatio Alger-that we find it hard to accept the fact that they are serious nonsense.” (99) Essentially, Rose is explaining how students should not be expected to learn how to be independent by themselves. In the world outside of college, adults need to make life changing decisions; therefore, they need to have the confidence to be sure in their life choices.
Independence that is learned in college shows it...
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...ll help them flourish in the world and become the independent, successful person everyone strives to be.
Works Cited
Bouton, Clark, and Russell Y Clark. “Learning in Groups.” Rolf Norgaard 400. Composing Knowledge; Readings for College Writers. Ed. Rolf Norgaard. Boston:Bedford/St.Martin’s, 2007. 239-251. Print.
Bruffe, Kenneth A. “The Art of Collaborative Learning: Making the Most of Knowledgeable Peers.” Composing Knoweledge; Readings for College Writes. Ed. Rolf Norgaatd. Boston:Bedford/St.Martin’s, 2007. 399-407. Print.
Freire, Paulo. “The ‘Banking’ Concept of Education.” Composing Knowledge; Readings for College Writers. Ed. Rolf Norgaard. Boston:Bedford/St.Martin’s, 2007. 239-251. Print.
Rose, Mike. “Entering the Conversation.” Composing Knowledge; Readings for College Writers. Ed. Rolf Norgaard. Boston:Bedford/St.Martin’s, 2007. 96-108. Print.
Johns, Ann. "Discourse Communities and Communities of Practice: Membership, Conflict, and Diversity." Wardle, Elizabeth and Doug Downs. Writing about Writing A College Reader. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin's, 2011. 498-519. Print.
Writing As Re-vision: A Student's Anthology (pp. 108-111). Needham Heights, MA: Simon & Schuster Custom Publishing
Many students do not get the help they need to become independent, and being overwhelmed may lead a student to commit suicide, fail, or even drop out during college. If a student fails, his or her self-esteem can be permanently damaged, and the consequences can affect an entire lifetime. Students must receive more help from college administrators and professors and influence them to self-manage better. It is understandable that some people do not want colleges to help more because they want the students to make mistakes and learn from them, which may help them become more independent.... ...
Rose, Mike. “Blue-Collar Brilliance”. “They Say / I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing with Readings. 2nd ed. Graff, Gerald, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. 243-54. Print.
The third part of the book’s purpose is that by attaining the first two, “it would encourage more enjoyable and articulate communication between the two [Professor and pupil]” (pg. X). To do so, Corrigan endeavors to excite readers with the possibilities that lay in writing: sharing experiences, analyzing themes and imagery, and simply writing about the most popular and entertaining medium around.
Downs, Doug. "The Concept of Discourse Community." Writing about Writing: A College Reader. By Elizabeth A. Wardle. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 466-78. Print.
Meyer, Michael, ed. Thinking and Writing About Literature. Second Edition. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001.
Hathaway, William. "Oh, Oh." The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Leading, Thinking, and Writing. Ed. Michael Meyer. 4th ed. Boston: Bedford, 1996. 593-94.
Self-reliance refers to more than being independent in life such as paying bills and living on your own, but as well as independent to the way the world and humankind rely on the self to exist. In other words self-reliance has two meanings; both a spiritual value and an economic value. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a transcendentalist, who seems to have the same way of thinking as today’s millennials, would approve of Jean Twenge’s label of “Generation Me”.
Financial Independence would mean not parting with the last 2000 dollars I spent my life earning on the first payment of your second semester of college. It would be not faking a smile at my parents while angst infiltrates my mind as I think of the right time to inform your parents how much you owe to your university this semester, something I still have not done yet. It would be taking a deep breath without a little voice gnawing at my heart, telling me that the American Dream that was preached to me my entire life may not really exist. For me, financial independence used to mean being able to buy a nice house in the future to live in with my husband and raise my children. Now financial independence would mean being able to help my boyfriend who lives 3000 miles away, that I’ve only seen once in the past year and a half, get a good education, and help set him up for a better life.
Lerych, Lynne, and Allison DeBoer. The Little Black Book of College Writing. Boston, New York:
Collaborative learning is a situation where two or more people attempt to learn something together. Dillenbourg, P. (1999). Lev Semenovich Vygotsky, (born in 1986), introduced his theory that, human development—child development as well as the development of all human kind—is the result of interactions between people and their social environments. What this states is that the development of a “higher education” is the product of comparing and contrasting ideas of others ultimately to conclude a solution to a problem as a whole or group. Everyone’s input in a collaborative situation will play a role in final solution.
According to the researchers, “conceptualizing this transition as a social/cognitive act of entering a discourse emphasizes both the problem-solving effort of a student learning to negotiate a new situation and the role the situation will play in what is learned” (p. 222). The view that writing is typically a socially situated, communicative act is later incorporated into Flower’s (1994) socio-cognitive theory of writing. In the social cognitive curriculum students are taught as apprentices in negotiating an academic community, and in the process develop strategic knowledge. Writing skills are acquired and used through negotiated interaction with real audience expectations, such as in peer group responses. Instruction should, then, afford students the opportunity to participate in transactions with their own texts and the texts of others (Grabe & Kaplan, 1996). By guiding students toward a conscious awareness of how an audience will interpret their work, learners then learn to write with a “readerly” sensitivity (Kern,
The first thing that I noticed was there are some individuals that exhibit extreme traits of independence and develop some type of antisocial behaviors. I remember in high school there was times that I preferred to work by myself, instead of working in a group. There were times it seemed that I appeared to be antisocial because I did not like working with people, due to my shy and quiet personality that I had. Taking into consideration the idea of gaining freedom when one becomes independent; there is a consequence to it. The consequence being that once one has had a taste of freedom, especially from the reigns of parents; one does not like to be told what to do. People then bring the argument that they can’t be told what to do because they are not in charge of them. In this case it also bring tension in a relationship, where one is independent and likes to do things on their own and does not think of their partner. So being too much of an independent individual can result in one’s relationships with the whole of society, not only friends and family members and rarely ask for help from
Many young people just need to be motivated and given a fair chance at success. Young people need mentors to help them find their way and to help them stay focused. Mentors play an intricate roll in your lives and are sort of liaisons between your parents or guardians and your educators.