3.3 Personal Reflection (Required to earn certificate)

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  Posted by CUNY Mindset Initiative on July 3, 2024 at 7:23 pm

  💬  Share your personal reflection:

  How do we begin to explore the ways we can create a sense of belonging? We start with ourselves! It’s always powerful to take a moment and put ourselves in the shoes of our students, because no matter how long ago it was, we were once them. We were once starting college or moving through it and taking courses for the first time or embarking on a certain major.

  We invite you to reflect upon the following questions before moving to the other components of this module.

  • What was your college experience like? In what ways did you feel like you belonged in the greater campus community? Who or what do you think was mainly responsible for that? If you didn’t feel like you belonged, what do you think could have been supportive for you?
  • Consider now, your proximity and relationship to the students you teach. What is their overall general college experience like? In what ways is it similar or different from your own? (Consider demands on their time, commuting versus living on-campus, and other key components of college life.)
  • Finally, to what extent do you feel comfortable sharing your college experience with your students? What makes you comfortable or uncomfortable to do so?

• Cynthia Chris (she/her)

  Participant

  September 11, 2024 at 2:43 pm

  I did my undergraduate degree at a private art school in a large city several hours away from where I grew up, thanks to generous need-based financial aid, some merit scholarship, college work-study jobs, and a more or less manageable student loan (it seemed daunting at the time). I had just turned 18, lived in a dorm for a few months then with roommates, knew no one in Chicago before moving there to study; almost everyone I met was a student or otherwise connected to the School. While in some ways, I was a fish out of water (small town girl in the big city; pursuing an interest distinctly different from the interests or professions of folks I knew of back home), the experience was so immersive that I do think it fostered belonging. There is a great deal about my college experience that differs from most of my students’, so I don’t find opportunities to share much about it, though I do connect with them as first in my family to finish a bachelor’s degree. The vast majority of my students live in the homes/with families they grew up with, can’t begin to imagine how an entry-level job will pay NYC-area rents, and work outside of home/school at jobs in restaurants, retail stores, delivery services, warehouses, gig-economy jobs. I try to be mindful not to overshare, to be judicious, out of concern for actually deepening the generation gap between us — I’ve heard students complain more than once about instructors waxing nostalgic for their good old days … who wants to hear that?