65 Learning Reflections

Thinking about how I learn is something I’ve never really done. Most of the time I just think that I know what I know because I know it. However, thinking deeper about how I learn has led me to discover that research is my main way of knowing. For example, about a year ago, I wanted to learn how to crochet. I didn’t know anybody who had done this before, so I was left on my own. So, to start, I went to YouTube to watch “How To” videos. This brought up another way I learn – through hands-on activity. Being able to practice the different crochet stitches as I watched people do it on YouTube at the same time as me helped me pick up the hobby quickly. So I have learned that the best way for me to learn is through my own research and hands-on activity.

Active listening is completely immersing yourself in a conversation with another person. This includes eliminating distractions as best as you can. Because distractions can come from anywhere – your surroundings, other people, or even your own mind – this can require a lot of effort. Another part of active listening is reflecting and/or clarifying what they are saying to you. To do this, you can summarize what they are saying back to them to make sure you are getting a clear understanding or ask questions if there is something unclear to you. The most important part of active listening, to me, is to empathize with the speaker. Letting them know that you are hearing what they are saying and validating their feelings can help the speaker feel more comfortable. It also can allow you to give thoughtful and helpful feedback.

I was able to practice active listening with one of my coworkers, Rami. We had a lab meeting Thursday night and he was presenting his research. Rami didn’t specifically say that he noticed anything different, but I do think that he noticed that I was much more attentive to his presentation than I normally am. Because I was practicing active listening, I was able to get a better understanding of the work he does, and when he asked if there were any questions, I asked him one which is something I don’t normally do. I did find it somewhat challenging to practice active listening in this scenario because our meeting was in the evening after a long day of classes, so I really had to focus my mind on Rami and what he was saying. I also found that because there were other people in our meeting, I had to work harder to tune out the distractions that they presented.

I had never really heard of or engaged with visual thinking strategies (VTS) prior to our class discussions and activities, so critically viewing and analyzing the painting “Anarcha with Dr. J. Marion Sims” and the Medical Education Research Facility (MERF) was a completely new experience for me. I understand the process of VTS to include a discussion of art that prompts participants to observe, interpret, and discuss artwork that can come in many different forms. In our case, the artwork we observed came in the form of a painting and the architecture (and the art found inside) of a building. I believe the purpose of VTS is to encourage people to deeply engage with different forms of art, and, in turn, this helps to enhance skills such as critical thinking, observation, and communication.

What I learned from using VTS to view the “Anarcha with Dr. J. Marion Sims” painting is that VTS requires a lot of attention to detail and much more effort than I would have first imagined. I can look at the painting, see a woman sitting on a table surrounded by three men, and assume that’s all there is to it, but by using VTS I was able to learn so much more. By critically examining the people’s postures, I saw that the woman was very rigid, maybe even apprehensive. The man at the front of the painting stood with his arms crossed as if he were in deep contemplation. The two men standing behind the woman had their sleeves rolled up, almost as if they were ready to do some work. Just by giving a little more effort in looking into the details of the painting, I saw a story begin to form. With just a bit more effort and attention to details such as facial expressions or surroundings, I was able to get a more complete story. I took what I learned from using VTS to look at the painting with me when I went to observe the MERF. I now understood that in order to get the most out of the experience and gain a deeper understanding of the MERF, I had to pay very close attention to details and give more effort beyond just looking. When I used these skills, I was able to see that the architects of the MERF didn’t just want to make it a building – they wanted to make it a peaceful, comfortable place for community learning. The courtyard was very open with a lot of greenery, creating a space for people to destress and take a deep breath of fresh outdoor air. All the different parts of the building were connected – whether through paved sidewalks or hallways lined with windows – seeming to promote collaboration between different groups of people. What caught my attention the most was the art inside the building. Specifically, there was a set of three images of cells taken by a microscope hung on a wall, but it wasn’t displayed as just microscope images that you would typically see in a scientific research article. These images were brightly colored and framed on the wall as if they were paintings you’d find in an art gallery. When I saw these, I felt as if science and art had collaborated. People often think of these topics as completely different entities, but I learned, from those images, that they can work together to create something even more striking.

Throughout this semester, I have learned to use AI in many new ways to help aid in my learning. I have learned to use it through creating summaries of articles, generating images, and proofreading. I used ChatGPT to generate summaries of articles and compared their summaries to some of my own. What I learned from this is that AI is able to create summaries that cover the main points but vaguely. When I compared the AI-generated summary to my own, I saw that my own summary included far more detail than did the AI-generated summary. I again used ChatGPT to generate a summary of an article but this time, I asked it to summarize in the form of a Dr. Seuss poem. This was a fun way to experiment with AI, and in my opinion, it did a surprisingly good job. Again, the main points were covered in the poem and this time it rhymed! I feel as if this prompt is a good way to make learning a little more fun, and it also helped to make the material more digestible. I think this way of using AI would be useful for people who are trying to learn foreign material and are just trying to understand the big picture. If someone was an expert on a topic and wanted to get into the nitty-gritty details, I don’t think this way of applying AI would be as useful.

Another way that I have used AI is to proofread my own writings. For this, I used Grammarly which is good for spellchecking and other editing tasks, but it is not very good for revision tasks such as sentence structure. I found that it would often suggest changing a sentence to make it as simple as possible. Although sometimes a simple sentence is needed, it is not needed all the time and can make a writing sound boring or robotic. So, I often found myself ignoring these prompts to change a complex sentence into a simpler one. I also used several different AI platforms to try to generate an image for a health narrative. When I was doing this, I got a bit frustrated with AI because it was not generating exactly what I had in mind. I tried to make my prompt as specific as possible, but it still would not give me what I was looking for. Through this, I learned that AI may be useful when you are just trying to spark some creativity or are looking for a starting place. But because I had a specific image already in my mind and it wasn’t giving me that exact image, I did not find it useful to me in this scenario.

This semester has been filled with a lot of learning – from learning new ways to think about things to learning new skills. One learning objective that has helped to expand my moral imagination and empathy is learning about stigma, oppression, and shame in a healthcare context. Particularly our class discussions on burnout opened my eyes to how universal this experience is. Burnout is something that I have dealt with, but prior to this class, I felt alone in dealing with this and didn’t know how to cope with it. Now I know that I am not alone, and I have learned new coping strategies such as storytelling and art therapy.

A skill that I have learned through this class, and one that I plan to use throughout my future, is reflection as a part of learning. Before this class, I always felt that reflection was a waste of time and really didn’t help me in any way, but after having done so many reflections for this class, I can find the value in it. I have learned that through reflection, I am able to truly think about my learning and consider its worth in my life and in my future.