My name is Anna Cho and I am a third year Biology major here at Emory! I am on the pre-PA track. When I was younger I used to love reading anything fiction and would only read in my free time, but that stopped once I hit middle school and I never really picked up and finished a real book again (unless it was for school reading assignments). I acknowledge that it is quite sad and I have tried to get back into reading but I never end up finishing the book. As for my learning style, I am a visual learner and am terrible at picking up things just by reading instructions/information. As a writer, I feel as if I am a creative writer when it comes to anything fiction and storytelling. However, when it comes to research papers, nonfiction, analyses, etc. I am horrible at writing. I am very scared because I am not good at forming my thoughts into words so I am afraid that I will not be able to make good points during discussions, and I know stuttering will be inevitable as I never know how to complete my thoughts. However, I am here to learn and grow my weaknesses.
Thank you for your post, Anna! As someone interested in biology and presumably the body/anatomy, I’m sure you will have exciting insights into lots of the literature that we will read! I know that I too have struggled at points to pick up books and finish them — oftentimes I either get bored, jump ahead to the ending, or get overwhelmed at the thought of how many pages are left, and put a book down for too long without finishing it. What I’ve learned, however, is that there is always value in reading, whether or not we “complete” a text. Different moments will stand out to different people in inexplicable and unpredictable ways, and knowing the end of a text is not required to have an affective response to it, or to making space in your brain for what you were able to read. So, instead of using whether or not you’ve finished a book as a metric for success, consider differently how just engaging in the process of reading is usually, most of the time, absolutely enough. I would also encourage you to think about how “visual learning” can be a kind of reading, a “reading of the image,” and then reconsider how reading functions in your life — I’m sure you will be surprised at how often you practice it without realizing it! Lastly, there’s no need to worry about making “good points” during discussion, as we’re all here to learn and learning requires failure, falling, stumbling, stuttering, and the right amount of courage to face those fears of not living up to our own or others’ standards. I never expect the “right words” in class discussion; instead, I just look for effort, trying, and a reflexivity towards our perpetual trial and error as students.