56 Learning Reflections

When it comes to learning for me, I find that I am diverse in the ways of learning that work for me. While some forms of learning work better in some situations, a combination of visual, auditory, and hands-on learning are what best help me learn about something I am interested in. For example, in my Principles of Human Anatomy course, I find that I tend to understand a concept when I see laid out in an image and I can listen to the professor talk about the concept and the image that goes with it. I also try to create an activity that I can perform as a way of remembering the concept. Another example is for the first exam, I needed to know the process of male and female gametogenesis, so I was able to show the processes with my hands.

Active listening is more deliberate style of hearing/listening. This process involves keeping your undivided attention on the person you are listening to. When doing active listening, you don’t want to interrupt the speaker with your own story, thoughts, feelings, or opinions,  but rather, just let them speak. The role of the active listener is not to react but rather to validate and show understanding of what was said. Trying active listening taught me that the conversations you have while actively listening are more meaningful and constructive. Active listening can be hard to do because tuning out distractions can be hard, maintaining eye contact can be uncomfortable, and we don’t ever really stop and think about listening before engaging in conversation, so stopping and thinking about active listening can also be awkward.

Before Tuesday, I was not aware of VTS. As far as I know, I have not engaged with this form of thinking but I was not completely surprised to learn that it was a thing. We do pretty much everything with our eyes first, so using what we see to gain a better understanding or an interpretation of something seems like a pretty plausible and helpful thing to do. With limited knowledge of what VTS is, I currently understand it to be a way of thinking that is more subjective than what the objective reality is presenting to us. VTS is thinking deeper than just what the building says it is used for or what the picture objectively shows, it is what the building and the painting (etc.) looks like, feels like, smells like and what those sensations say on a subliminal level about the object of focus. VTS provides a deeper understanding and meaning than just surface objectivity.

While practicing using VTS, I learned that taking a step back, taking a moment to really consider what is in front of me opens up a whole new world that I didn’t consciously know existed. I never thought that I could feel so many things just by walking through and around a building. I would never stop to consider that the curves of the exterior exude comfort and still say that the building is an important hub for health information and ideas. I never would consider that high ceilings and many windows can provide a comfortable atmosphere for collaboration and learning. I also learned that looking at art is also about not just looking at the objective details of the picture, but what those objective details say about the picture subjectively.

This semester was my first time using AI for anything. I was always apprehensive about how to use it so I just never did. I used it during classes to summarize long academic articles for easier reading and comprehension in order to write a proposal for a paper. Another way that I used AI was creating a generated image/collage that embodied a specific issue within health, illness, and healing that I was interested in exploring.

What I learned by beginning to use AI is that depending on what you would like the AI to do for you, you need to be specific with the instructions you gave it. For instance, when creating the AI collage about different types of addiction, the first instructions I gave ChatGPT were not specific enough and the image it generated was not what I was looking for. However, when I got more specific such as asking it to make a collage and adding certain features such as chains, the image got more specific and ended up being what I was looking for. Something else that I learned while using AI is that when you ask the AI to summarize an article for you, it is still important that you read all or at least a majority of the article to make sure that the summary you are given is in line with the information you are looking for. Specific instructions were also important for summarizing articles because just asking AI to summarize the article gave non-specific information and was not really useful. When I asked the AI to summarize and provide the main points of the article, the summary was more specific and helpful to my needs. Overall, I learned that AI is a helpful tool in aiding humans and the work that we do, but we are far from AI completely taking over the work that humans do.

Throughout the duration of this course, I learned how integrating music, art, film, and storytelling offers a different type of medicine from the more biomedical ones that I have learned about frequently in other courses. These art forms offer people the chance to tell their stories and heal from their experiences, without having to take a drug or medical tests. They offer comfort, understanding, knowledge, and education about medical and health issues that may otherwise not be considered or known about. I achieved this learning by practicing it. I created a collage about addiction, a playlist about body and self acceptance, and I analyzed a film surrounding a disability. I also learned about the responsible ways to use AI and the pros and cons of AI. Before this course, I was always too nervous to use AI because I thought it was cheating and I just didn’t know how to use it correctly. This course taught me that using AI can be good and helpful when I know how to use it correctly. It’s not about letting the AI do all the work for me, but rather, using the AI to supplement my own thoughts, ideas, and knowledge to produce meaningful and original work.

In general, this course has taught me a lot about how to be a better student, a better listener, a better health professional, and a better person overall. I hope that I take some of these lessons with me wherever I go and use them to the best of my ability.