Final Blog Post

These wordle's are being generated from James Paul Gee’s article, “Good Video Games and Good Learning”, the academic article of,” The transition to college: Diverse students, diverse stories “, and from my family's thoughts on what they think success is and how you can achieve it. Words from my family are in the first wordle, and the words inside vary from "winning" to "creating a family and watching them grow".  One thought that really sticks out to me is "Conquering your fears", because I believe in life that if you have fear in regards of anything that it could possibly hold you back from the best experiences you can make. Fear of heights could hold you back from seeing the mountain top view in the Grand Canon. Fear of flying can hold you back from visiting your dream getaway. My whole life I loved heights and jumping off of rocks into the water at lakes, but one thing I never said I was going to do was going bungee jumping. I have always been scared of the rope snapping or coming back up to the bridge. While I was in Costa Rica over the summer I had the opportunity to go, and I knew it was one I couldn't pass up. The scenery was beautiful, the weather was perfect, and I knew it was a great chance to get over my fear. Standing on the ledge was terrifying, but once I jumped out and let myself free fall, I knew it was worth it. I loved every second of it, and conquering my fear felt amazing. To this day it is one of the best successes in my life, and I'm so happy I decided to do it. Risk taking to me means that you try new things, and find new avenues in life that can lead you in different directions. Every risk and decision you make in your life can greatly affect you or can lead to a small change, either way it’s something different that what you’re use to (Gee).

Success to me is very interesting, because I view it in many different ways. Each day we have small successes that potentially lead to large ones. Completing homework may be a small success that leads to an A in calculus. In my case, every time I get an A on a quiz I realize that it is one step closer to an A in the class, which is very important because I need to pass it for my major. Also it's such a huge deal to me because I am horrible at math, and earning an A in calculus has been my goal since day 1, and if I achieve it I will be so proud of myself. Referring back to Gee’s thoughts about how good video games challenge one’s mind and teaches them in a different context, it helps me put success in a different light then I have before. When he says,

“I failed many times and had to engage in a virtual research project via the Internet to learn some of the things that I needed to know. All of my Baby-Boomer ways of learning and thinking did not work, and I felt myself using learning muscles that had not had this much of a workout since my graduate school days in theoretical linguistics” (Gee 34).

Even though he had failed many times before, he realized that if he kept trying at the game, he would eventually get it.  He went against the saying “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”, he proved them wrong and succeed at the game, but only by using his beneficial advice, which leads to success in learning. His point, “Explore, think Laterally, Rethink Goals”, really makes me question achievement. When I think of achievement, I typically think of a ladder going up, but he makes it look like a train track. He says, “They encourage players to explore thoroughly before moving on; to think later- ally, not just linearly…”(Gee 36).  I feel as if our generation wants everything to be done in a rush, but we need to stop and evaluate what we’ve just created and really think if it’s our best. Instead of rushing I would rather have the job done right but slower, rather than fast and incomplete. Finally the last point I feel that is very crucial to your success is your identity. How Gee puts it really makes it set in, he says, “No deep learning takes place unless learners make an extended commitment of self” (Gee 34). In my personal case, I can connect to this idea because my junior year of high school I really wanted to try to learn how to dive. At first I had passion for the sport, but as the season grew deeper, I lost focus and passion so my willingness to want to learn decreased as well. You have to have interest in something to make a connection with it and want to keep striving to be better at it. Once you have the identity within you then you are ready to reach the goals you set for yourself. Now going to article that describes an experiment about the focus on the transition from high school to college. Looking at the wordle above you'll see different words like effort, outcomes, skill, and development (Terenzini). Each word represents a subcategory about success to me. Effort will only make you become closer to reaching your goals. My old soccer coach always said to me "what you'll get out of it is what you are willing to put into it". -Coach Flavius. Practice doesn't always make perfection. Perfect Practice makes Perfection, and I personally believe effort and skill will are great ways of getting there. And your outcomes will depend on your development, skill, and effort. So these words Terenzini and the other authors use to describe this transition is powerful because they are telling you how to become successful in how to transition from one life chapter to the next. 

So what I've come to the conclusion of is that you make up your own success. It's different for everyone. Learning from my sisters, my family, and the different articles I've read is that we all have different types of dreams, different kinds of goals, different aspirations, but the one thing we all have in common is wanting to finally reach our success. The other thing that I've come to the conclusion of also while I was writing this blog post is that I have no idea what I want to succeed in life, and yes that scares me but it also gives me hope. Hope to learn a little about a lot; hope to make changes; hope to make mistakes; and hope to finally make a difference. That's all I know, I just know I want to make a difference in someone's life, so if I did that during this blog post, great! If not, well, that means I still have work to do!

Works Cited:

Gee, James Paul. "Learning by Design: Good Video Games as Learning Machines." E-Learning 2.1 (2005): 5. Print

Terenzini,, Patrick T., Laura I. Rendon, M. Lee Upcraft, Susan B. Millar, Kevin W. Allison, Patricia L. Gregg, and Romero Jalomo. "The Transition to College: Diverse Students, Diverse Stories - Springer." The Transition to College: Diverse Students, Diverse Stories - Springer. Kluwer Academic Publishers-Human Sciences Press, 24 Apr. 1994. Web. 24 Apr. 2013.