I definitely agree with courage being a big step toward leadership. It is important to instill courage in learning environments to encourage students to take risks and think outside the box. I remember schools generally taught me to be a factory worker by always preaching the system and to never "color outside the box". This actually hurt my academic growth b/c it hadn't introduced me to the value of failure. Fear of failure prevented me from really challenging myself and really stunned my growth throughout elementary/middle school.

To me, it sounds like SFSU takes pride in creating a space of diversity in order to add a rich culture to its learning atmosphere. It also encourages free-thinking free of discrimination, and hopes to create leaders out of the students who climb their way up the educational ladder. Although this sounds great, I don't think this school has gotten their yet. I've recently seen a mob of SFSU students shouting death threats, sexual harassment, and racist comments directed toward elder people preaching anti-abortion on campus. I understand anti-abortion is a sensitive topic, but a mob mentality definitely goes against the school's values, and paints a very poor picture of SFSU

I can definitely relate with this line. I personally tend to struggle with things like history or anything relating to that, because it really boils down to memorizing key names or dates, which'll later be brain-dumped. I tend to thrive in subjects like physics or calc because there is at least a system to it where I can connect dots and apply them to solving real world problems. I never have to study math/physics to earn an A, whereas I study for hours upon hours memorizing history just to muster up a C grade.

I believe it would have been very useful back before the internet to educate kids/ future students about college to help ease them into the transition. I've seen a lot of students drop out due to homesickness, and scammed by for-profit college tactics because of students lack of knowledge of college culture, and the financial/academic process.

I can relate to this on some level. My parents never encouraged college, actually going so far as to discourage it out of fear of paying out of pocket. I knew nothing about college culture, or the academic process. Luckily we have the internet, which everyone has access to. I just googled/emailed/called for answers. So being a first-gen student isn't really an excuse for extra credit in my opinion.

I agree in increasing efforts for disadvantaged students to attend uni's; I don't agree with the first-gen method as it seems to be very unfocused. to me, first-gen isn't the same thing as "low income" or "underprivileged". There is technology out there designed to help future students navigate the academic. At first, I was very confused about the college process, and received no help from parents. All I had to do was use the internet and send a couple emails to get the answers I was looking for.

I actually don't believe in this day and age that being a first-gen college student is deserving of special treatment. I fail to see the disadvantage with today's technology, where if you have a question, you could just google the answer or watch a YouTube video. My parents never encouraged college or talked about college, but since I'm an adult I was able to do research and make a decision for myself. I've literally put myself through education with zero support from parents. I don't believe that is deserving of a "bump", while there are others who struggle financially.

This was true for me to. In my situation, college was too expensive for me to go in without a clear goal of what I wanted to become. I didn't have a lot of guidance or work experience beforehand to make a calculated decision toward my professional goals. I once thought I wanted to work in film or creative writing, but once I dabbled with that before entering college and realizing how unstable of a lifestyle it entailed, I was able to make a decisive choice geared toward my strengths and values. College is just too risky to not be 100% on board with your career path. I would advising being familiar with your world before pursuing it.

This is a very interesting line that speaks to me on several levels. I've actually done a lot of research behind my current career path of becoming a Software Engineer and I'd have to agree with this line. People working in this field make on average $120,000 annually, and roughly 90% have a bachelors relating to SE. I personally used to work as an Aviation Maintenance Tech beforehand, which I didn't need a bachelors for and made $60,000 annually. In my opinion, the aviation job is significantly more difficult than SE. This just goes to show the importance of furthering education.

I agree with Willingham here. Personally I haven't seen any better results with my academics or work by buying into a "learning style". I've in fact seen a lot more harm than good as a student trying to understand a topic. For instance, instead of learning the meaning behind a certain word, or see where a word might fit into the bigger picture, I would just memorize the word. Maybe I would correlate it with another word, but I could never visualize the word, because it wasn't my "learning style". This was probably more harmful at work where I'd often read what I was supposed to do. I could recite every step, but actually doing it was a problem, because I couldn't visualize most of the steps. Because of this I'd argue a combination of teaching styles and study habits be implemented to better understand a subject, as adopting a learning style can be very limiting.

I really like this line of text because it paints a picture of how we see ourselves as learners vs how we actually are. I can relate to this because I used to enjoy being a visual learner and identified as being that type of student. I would priorities my study habits around the visual style, only to fail written portions of what I visualized. This also happened vice versa, where I studied written material only to fail the visualized version of what was written. Because of this, I would like to argue that teaching or studying with a specific style only limits your memory to that style. To me there has to be a combination of teaching styles and study habits to make the most out of understanding and memorizing the material. I believe that there isn't one style that fits one student best, but instead a combination of styles that every student can benefit from.