By: Lairen Brush

College Campuses have many new and different ways of innovative learning. That may be more hands-on, the guidelines adhered to are vague at best and downright strange at worst, and you follow a track that interests you. No more of this is the right way and you’re wrong if you don’t do it this way.

If you’re coming in for college from a high school, you may have professors with what is acknowledged as a “flipped classroom”. When it’s described, it makes no sense. Homework in the class, and teaching outside of it. I even thought, “That’s not how learning works. You follow a path given to you, taught by people who know it. It’s a routine with few changes between courses.”

However, in the greater schemes of College, this makes sense. Homework is putting the knowledge you learn in class to work. In College, you are actively learning to get a job where the knowledge can be applied. College is a practice session. People can downgrade it all they want to a waste of money but that’s not what it is.

This way of learning has many pros and cons.

For pros: you can interact with classmates and the professors more. This is mainly because the courses tend to be group work to help each other. The professor walks around and clarifies the material, allowing students to ask questions from those that know it better. However, it is not the best for those of us with problems of the social variety.

I am not social. In fact, I dislike interacting with people. The idea of it is anxiety-inducing to me. I much prefer the self action of lectures and homework. I also don’t tend to learn better this way as it requires me to ask questions, an action that causes way too much investment. You have to actually ask the question, show what you’ve done so far (another anxiety inducing act), and wait for the answer. All this doesn’t even include the action of if you will get the answer for the question you are looking for. 

Sometimes, to help with the anxiety (and some of my ADHD), I try to get to the point as fast as possible. This can include skipping words, talking to fast, ignoring irrelevant information, and skipping it if I get confused. This does not help when the professor answers the part I know, and not the part I don’t. To counteract the action of what I know is clarifying, I treat it as correcting someone. 

This means that I don’t want to correct someone, so I don’t. My question is not answered. My confusion is not cleared and I am still stuck. I can’t fall back on fundamental knowledge I should have by week 5 and midterms and the class is significantly harder.

Overall, this way of learning helps the times you know the information and not the times you don’t. It is supposed to help you learn and apply what you have learned, but it just confuses you if you don’t have the basics of information.