I have been taking classes at Portland State University since I was in

high school. Even while I lived in Washington I independent studied

through the university. During my two year stay in Port Townsend, WA

my parents continued to encourage me to be involved in education but

it wasn't until I had been accepted to every single prestigious art

school I applied to that I decided that PSU was where I wanted to be.

 

This web site was assigned in my UNST (university studies) class as a

freshman and it is the first and only portfolio of school work I have

ever bothered to make. It is a compilation of the UNST 'goals' and the

assignments that I feel apply to my having learned more about each one

of them. There are four goals as you can see on the navigation image

in the corner: Communication, Critical Thinking, Ethics and Diversity.

Over the course of the year, my freshman inquiry class was assigned to

complete projects that apply to each one of these goals (the

assignments can be found in the section where I have decided they best

belong) and it is these four concepts that are the ingredients for

UNST.

Communication

This is by far my least favourite goal. I've always struggled with

communication, especially in large groups of people not unlike my

class. When group projects became an assignment, I panicked.

Fortunately, it seems that my performance arts upbringing had lent me

a hand in communicating to the class and actually it turned out that

figuring things out in JUST my group was the hard part. There were 3

group projects assigned during the whole year and with each one I

tried a different tactic.

The first time around I found myself confused and unprepared when the

presentation day arrived. I had mostly just worked on the appearance

of it rather than the delivery and realized that I had no idea what my

other group members were talking about. We had no shared any

information with each other and it made our presentation a disaster.

My second group was a little more productive. We arranged times and

places for us to meet and talk about what we had finished and what we

had learned. This was a good idea, but unfortunately it was not good

enough. Instead of focusing on what our whole message was, we all

ended up becoming experts ONLY in our field. We also never practiced

our presentation and so when the time came again, we were nervous and

not as prepared for our speech as we could have been.

The last group project that was assigned MAY not have had the most

pleasing performance, but it was by far the most valuable. Instead of

focusing on the esthetics of our power point or the validity of our

information, we focused on working together. Cheesy, I know, but it

made a big difference. I made it a goal of mine to make sure that

everyone enjoyed the experience and that all my group members would be

interested in what they were studying. Instead of meeting just before

the big day, we met at least twice a week to see where we were. We

practiced in front of each other and gave constructive criticism. We

all knew the information, we all worked on the power point and we all

presented as best as we could which I think is the most important part

of communication.

 

Critical Thinking

I've never been required to have an opinion before. Learning had only

been a long period of gathering information and then a short moment of

purging it all onto a piece of paper. Critical thinking was something

I had never been prompted to do before I attended my UNST class. It's

pretty hard to define what critical thinking actually is, but I like

to say that it is the process of questioning everything. In order to

learn something, you really have to understand it inside and out, then

you can come up with your own educated ideas about the subject. For

example, the last term of freshman inquiry had a portion of the class

set aside for philosophy. I'd never liked philosophy and everyone I

knew who took classes on it had become really obnoxious and mean to

me. When I found out that we were going to have a big chunk of our

spring term dedicated to the stuff I was not excited. However, the

concept began to blossom in front of me as I learned more about it. We

were given numerous readings by different philosophers and I began to

understand that philosophy was not ONE single thing, it was a

magnitude of things. And, in fact, I realized that it was essentially

what I did in my head all the time but in more words. With this in

hand and with all those different ideas from the readings under my arm

I was able to form my own philosophy for our assignment called 'What

is Moral?' It may not have been what I actually believe, but the fact

that I could find a potential stance to take on the subject proves

that I had done some serious critical thinking.

 

Ethics

This was a subject that came up a fair amount in the winter term of

UNST. My professor for that quarter was an anthropologist and so

ethics was a big part of what she had to take into account when

studying. There was one particular book that caught my attention for

this particular goal called 'My Freshman Year' by Rebbekah Nathan. The

professor in the book, as an anthropologist, had decided to take leave

of her teaching job and re enroll in the university as a freshman in

order to observe. I was not particularly happy with some of the

conclusions she came to about freshman year students but the important

part is that she essentially held up the ethical role that we all

expected from her as an anthropologist. Like any study done on

conscious beings, permission to use names, faces, data or anything

pointing to one single individual must be granted. Rebbekah Nathan had

held up her false identity fairly well and the names of friends and

students that she met during her study had been kept confidential. It

would not have been ethical for her to have blatantly given away

personal information.

Similarly, I did a study on students for this section of UNST. I

decided to live amongst the people in the Portland State dormitories

for a week and see how lifestyles changed if one lived on campus. I

had to be careful not to designate names or titles to anyone in my

paper as it would point out who I was with and who was doing what

which would have been a release of private information which... would

not have been ethical. 'Dawn of the Dorms' is one of my favourite

pieces that I have written in school as of yet.

 

Diversity

It is said that Portland State University is a very diverse school

compared to most. I've never been to another college so I wouldn't

know. I suppose that because the school IS diverse I hadn't even

noticed that it was in the first place... There is very little

discrimination, all forms of people and beliefs are accepted and I

have never seen an act of violence committed against anyone for being

different at PSU. Given, I've been taken aback once or twice by some

of the things that I hear in class sometimes but it is usually because

I had never thought of it that way. I try to take other people's ideas

and understandings into account, adding it to my raster of options

rather than agreeing or disagreeing immediately. I have learned to be

tolerant of conflicting conversations and that no one is ever wrong,

they just need more information.