Just recently I had a meeting with Professor McCoy, talking about my old essay and brainstorming ideas for this new essay. While talking about the old essay, she asked why I had done the revision the way that I did. I replied that in high school, we were taught to make the changes that our teachers had asked us to make. She pointed out that just like she had mentioned in class, her comments were not a checklist for us to go through. Her comments were an idea for how to make our piece better overall.
While talking about our new essays, I showed her what I had been working on and then explained where I was going with what I had already written. She commented back that my ideas seemed interesting and that I could easily write an essay off of what I had spoken to her about. I then explained my next point in the essay which was contradicting everything that I had already said. I said that I was thinking about switching my prompts and she looked at me as if I were crazy. She said “why would you think that you need to switch your prompt when I just told you what you were writing about was interesting?” I replied, because I just contradicted myself and usually once you see a prompt, you have to stick with it and follow what it says.
While I was saying this, I realized that everything that I had said during our meeting was something that I learned in high school. No professor wants you to stop learning after you graduate high school, they are there to help you continue on your education. Thanks to McCoy’s help, I realized that I need to stop focusing on what I learned in high school and start focusing on what I am learning in college. It’s important to keep an open mind when looking at new topics and while you will always have those old learning techniques from high school in your head, you need to clear some space for new techniques.
Interdisciplinarity is all about combining two things into one whole. You learned things in high school and now you are learning things in college. It is important to combine these different learning styles together and form a technique that will hold the things you learned in high school but then also expand your knowledge and add to it things that you have learned in college.