Reflection Paper

Jackie Day

Loras College
 Reflection Paper

In my four years at Loras College, I have grown more as a person than I ever thought

possible in this amount of time. In all honesty, coming into a Catholic college, I did not believe it

would make me any more open minded than I already believed myself to be. I was extremely

mislead in thinking this. While Loras is a Catholic college, it is also a liberal arts college,

meaning that part of the goal is to offer a broad base of knowledge in many different disciplines.

I initially came in as an undecided major and really was not sure of the path I wanted to pursue. I

had wanted to be a history major but realized that not every class really sparked my interest like I

thought they would, so I opted for the minor instead. During my first semester, I really thought I

was just going to have to struggle through these four years and take classes just to take them,

coming out on the other side with nothing but a degree my heart was not invested in. However,

Loras did not fail me and my second semester of freshman year, I decided to take Introductory

Psychology since I had never had the opportunity in my schedule to take something like this in

high school. That one decision changed my entire college career and foreseeable future life path.

The beauty of attending a liberal arts college is that one is allowed the freedom to explore

different disciplines and choose, or not, the ones that benefit and interest them the most. Loras

College has four dispositions that they focus on instilling in their students. These are ethical

decision making, responsible contributing, reflective thinking, and active learning. While most

all the disciplines at Loras contribute something to all four of these dispositions, I will be

focusing on my growth and competency in the last two: reflective thinking and active learning.

Specifically, I will be relating my growth in these to the knowledge I have gained in my

respective disciplines, those being the psychology major along with my minor in history. Making

available many different areas of interest directly contributes to growth in the dispositions
because everyone, myself included, is allowed the opportunity to find something they really do

want to know more about and, in turn, expand their worldview.

The first of the dispositions I have seen myself grow the most in is reflective thinking.

Essentially, this entails being insightful in your thoughts and combining your own perspective

with those of others to gain a more fleshed out view of a topic. This might also be referred to as

critical thinking where you do not just simply take information at face value, but rather actively

consider what it means, as well as the source it comes from, for yourself and the world at large.

Growth in this area can sometimes be difficult as it involves becoming aware of your own biases

and utilizing that awareness to more accurately interpret information and interact with the world

around you. The psychology major in particular is extremely valuable in this respect because it is

all about understanding people and the way they think and behave, including oneself. We all

started off our careers at Loras in the introductory Modes of Inquiry class where we read a book

called Blindspot. This work explains what implicit biases are and brings to attention the fact that

we all possess these biases whether we want to or not (Banaji & Greenwald, 2013). The

psychology major then brought this idea full circle with the Senior Seminar class and a book

titled blink. This work focused on the ability of our brains to process necessary information in a

matter of seconds, and again brought in the idea of implicit biases and how these can affect the

way we react to certain situations (Gladwell, 2005). Upon enrolling at Loras, I had thought

myself to be a relatively neutral person, but I then discovered I have some of the same internal

biases as many others. However, Blindspot and blink did not just stop at bringing awareness to

the biases we hold, but also encouraged changing them. Now that I am aware of the fact that I

am not always subconsciously neutral, in matters of race for example, I can focus my efforts

more on altering that part of my thinking, possibly through exposure. The awareness also allows
me to better realize when my own biases are affecting the way I process certain information and

gives me the chance to step outside myself and see the situation from other points of view. While

psychology has allowed me to become aware of my sometimes narrow ways of thinking, my

history minor has given me the exposure to combat some of that. Some of the classes from this

wide-ranging discipline that have helped me the most in understanding and considering other

points of view are Islamic Civilizations, U.S. History Since 1945, and a topics class on Israel and

Palestine. Taking Islamic Civilizations my first year at Loras opened my eyes to a completely

different way of life and different faith that I had not been exposed to in such depth before, as did

Israel and Palestine. Learning about the conflict that has been going on in the Middle East for

such a long time put into perspective where I am at in the world and the fact that other people are

having experiences that alter their life forever that we do not often hear about in the United

States. U.S. History Since 1945, on the other hand, taught me much about the other perspectives

present in my own country. The main shock for me in this class was reading about the ideas of

Malcolm X on segregation and comparing them to Martin Luther King Jr., whom we hear so

much about, and realizing that Malcolm X was just as integral to the civil rights movement. The

reason we do not hear more about him and his perspective is because it is preferred that we are

taught MLK’s peaceful and passive approach rather than Malcom X’s more aggressive and

separationist philosophy. A multifaceted approach to certain topics has also been useful in the

psychology discipline, especially in one of the most controversial debates surrounding this

science: nature versus nurture. This is a debate based on whether our genes or our environment

have more effect on how we develop psychologically (Grison, Heatherton, & Gazzaniga, 2015).

Of course, thinking it is either or is an extremely narrow way to consider such a complex topic

and we have learned since that it is a mixture of both factors that contribute to our development
as humans. All the considerations and different perspectives I have encountered in my disciplines

have contributed to me becoming a more reflective thinker and engaging more with the

knowledge I am taking in.

The second of the dispositions I believe I have grown the most in is active learning.

Although I still had a desire to learn in high school, I realize now that it really only went as far as

being interested in gathering more facts. The active learning I thought I was doing at that point in

my life is nothing compared to what I have experienced since enrolling at Loras. It was at Loras

that I realized active learning means not only a desire to learn, but also a general curiosity about

the world around you and a deeper want to immerse yourself in knowledge with an end goal of

interpreting your surroundings with a broader worldview. The main experience I have engaged in

at Loras that was a prime example of me going out of my way to seek new perspectives purely

for the desire to learn and expand my worldview was attending Qur’an study sessions. The

aforementioned Islamic Civilizations class is what initially brought me to this experience

because when I first signed up for the class, these civilizations seemed so distant and

untouchable to me in that I thought I would not be able to connect very well to the content. This

was not the case. In fact, I was dumbfounded at how similar the people and their beliefs were to

me and others around me, the only difference really being the content of those beliefs. For

example, Islam has a God, Allah, and a prophet figure, Mohammed, just as Christianity does.

From this point, I went on to attend Qur’an study sessions on my own time where I was able to

draw connections from my Catholic background and the Bible as well as my current agnostic

viewpoint to more fully understand the way other people around the world and even in the

United States experience faith and religion. Members of many different faiths and beliefs, such

as Judaism or atheism, attended these sessions, making them all the more diverse, rich, and
intriguing. Active learning can also mean seeking out information that will allow for a more

informed viewpoint in your future career. In Physiological Psychology, I created one of the

projects I am most proud of from my time at Loras, having to do with the connection between

humans and animals. This project explored research done on the physical responses of humans to

the presence of animals, and vice versa, in order to develop an effective form of therapy for all

types of physical and mental ailments (Day, 2017). I have wanted to work with animals in some

capacity for as long as I can remember, but I never considered the therapeutic side of things until

I came to Loras and gained the background knowledge in psychology. Since then, I have been

seeking out further connections between my interest in working with animals and psychology

background in order to design the best future path for myself.

Overall, my growth and development as a human being has been immeasurably affected

by the experiences and knowledge I have gained in my time at Loras College. Through the

disciplines I have found my niche in, I have been able to become more passionate and active in

the way I learn, as well as think more critically and reflectively about what I am learning. It all

really makes the world a more rich and intriguing place to live.
 References

Banaji, M. R. & Greenwald, A. G. (2013). Blindspot: Hidden biases of good people. New York:

Delacorte Press.

Day, Jackie. (2017). Therapy Animals: The Human-Animal Connection. Retrieved from

https://medium.com/@dayjackie66788/therapy-animals-the-human-animal-connection-

1a5f1951d1ea

Gladwell, M. (2005). blink: The power of thinking without thinking. New York, NY: Little,

Brown, and Company.

Grison, S., Heatherton, T. F., & Gazzaniga, M. S. (2015). Psychology in your life. New York,

NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.