Running head: REFLECTION ON MY EDUCATION

Reflection on My Education
May Smith
Fontbonne University

REFLECTION ON MY EDUCATION

Reflection on My Education
One of my favorite games as a kid was a game my Mom invented called Puzzle Hide n
Seek. On rainy days when we were driving her crazy by bouncing off the walls, she would
entertain all of us kids by engaging us in this physical and mental hunt. She prepares by taking
puzzle pieces and putting them into plastic Easter Eggs. She then would hide the pieces
throughout the house and releases us from the no peeking zone in our bedroom. All of us
would explode across the house in a frenzy of energy and quickly find all the more obvious
hiding spots. Any gathered pieces were then taken to the dining room to be dumped out into a
big pile so we could start assembling the puzzle. Usually we didnt have enough pieces at the
beginning to really make more than a connection or two (if any), so the hunt would have to
continue. As the more obvious and easy hiding spots were cleaned out, we found more pieces to
make connections but gradually found it a difficult challenge to find the missing pieces that
would fill in the those annoying and glaring holes in the puzzle. Depending on our moods, some
days we would determinedly scour the whole house by ourselves, stubbornly refusing to give up
on winning whatever miniature prizes Mom had bought as rewards for finishing the puzzle.
Other days we would just flop to the ground and ask for the cheat sheet, a map my mom drew
to show where each egg was hidden. The big catch with the cheat sheet was that if we asked
for it, we didnt win the huntobviously since cheaters arent winners (This subtle life lesson
brought to you by lifes first teacher: Mom). Most days through was the happy medium
between the two. We couldnt get to our goals by ourselves, but we didnt have to cheat either.
What we could do was ask for hints, usually given in riddles or bits of trivia. The egg you seek
is hidden by a flower that rises best when hidden in the dark Egg found behind the bread flour
canister. No joke, seeking this yolk will really take you places! Egg found hidden inside her

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drawer of traveling maps. These were the best kinds of days because it not only engaged us in
the hunt, but often times we would find ourselves stopping or even abandoning the hunt to
explore this new area of information, often times asking to bake something or spreading her
maps all over the living room to plan our future trips.
Why do I begin my essay with this long winded story of a childhood game? I explored
this memory because I think it is the perfect analogy of what lifelong learning is. No matter
what subject we are studying, all learners are seeking pieces of information to try and build a full
and complete picture of understanding. You cant build a picture with just the center or just the
border. Full understanding comes from putting all the pieces together, both the fundamental easy
to identify ones and the harder ones that all look alike until you exam them more closely. When
we begin our journey into our profession, we do it with a picture in our head. Just like the box
cover picture, there was something that made us choose this puzzle to understand. We all start
off with great energy, but there will be times we may find ourselves resisting finding new pieces
and just want to flop on the floor. Those who seek an easy fix or to cheat their way to the
finished product will never actually understand or value what they are looking at. However, as
the field of Family and Consumer Sciences has grown, so has the pool of talent to train the next
generation of practitioners. Hints and helping hands are there not only to guide us to the missing
pieces, but also to encourage us to keep searching. For myself, pursing dietetics became an
obvious future profession when I took into account my love for helping others, my lifelong
interest in the science of food, and especially gentle counsel from two great teachers who knew
me better than I knew myself. I was a late bloomer though, needing many of my border and easyto-assemble pieces before I had a good idea of what puzzle I was trying to complete.

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Many of the more literal science courses, such as math and life sciences, showed me that
I had a knack for logical thinking, including the memorization needed for many of the courses
such as microbiology or advanced algebra. These classes are essential to the foundation of a
dietetic professional as many health choices rest on the knowledge of how chemicals, such as
leptin or glucose, can have effects on the human body or calculating the current BMI of a patient.
These help us see the numbers in our patients, but patients are never a set of logical numbers to
be sorted and fixed. They are all part of the human condition, a messy and abstract puzzle that
cant be solved with simple math or knowing where the duodenum is. Social sciences, history,
art, and even English are the subjects that fill the inside of the dietetics puzzle. With these
lessons, we learn to actually see our patients. Social sciences give us the basis of being able to
see a patient with a weight problem and look past the social stigma of their size. Psychology
taught us that they could have an eating disorder that shouldnt be dismissed. Economics and
government lesson have taught us that they may be in a life situation where healthy choices are
hard to make or come by. Sociology and history teaches us to pay attention to who they are,
where they came from, and what the foundation of their lives are based on. Philosophy and
religion presents the huge variety of the human mind and teaches us to open our ears before we
close our own minds. Art, literature, rhetoric, and communication are the tools given to us to
bridge these gaps in culture, history, religion, philosophy, and points of view. Without these
tools, we would be hopeless to connect to our patients and make ourselves human to them.
Technology is there to tie it all together, both as a power house of communication and tool to use
our numbers on. Whether we use it to keep in touch with a patient or they use it to track their
blood sugars, keeping up with technology are lessons that keep the whole puzzle together a lot
easier.

REFLECTION ON MY EDUCATION

There are lots of pieces to the puzzle that make up the dietetic profession, but not a single
piece can be ignored. Take away even one of the foundations and you walk away with an
incomplete puzzle, destined to never match its box cover picture.
Martin Luther King Jrs Comprehension: My Reflection
Dr. King is often fondly remembered as a man. He was never one of those untouchable
figureheads that was more legend than reality. He was never thought of as an untouchable
celebrity, divided from the common masses by some invisible line. He will never be
remembered as a cold and distant story that happened in that other place and time. Dr. King was
just a man and that is why he touched the hearts and minds of everyone he met with such strong
sincerity. To get to the hearts and minds of those people though, he had to go through their ears.
No one can ever deny Dr. King was a master of words. He built up stirring speeches, word by
word, just as an architectural master would build an elegant building. His speeches endure years
after he is gone, still stirring listeners to broaden their views and endearing himself to them.
How is it that this singular man is able to bring so many together though? Despite the myriad of
differences to the great crowds he spoke to, each one heard Dr. Kings speeches as if he was
speaking to them directly, personally, and humbly. So how did Dr. King accomplish this feat?
He used liberal arts to tie together everyones personal investments in his speeches. The long and
elegant messages that he spoke to eager crowds were sprinkled not just with a cry to end
injustice, but also bits and pieces of knowledge that most people could recognize and feel
connected to. In his speech The American Dream, Dr. King starts almost immediately by
utilizing one of the most well-known historical speeches in the United States, the Gettysburg
Address by Abraham Lincoln. With a simple reference, he acknowledged the crowds
expectation that he would address them about civil issues and managed to do it using a familiar

REFLECTION ON MY EDUCATION

and comfortable point of prior knowledge for them. From the Founding Fathers and history, he
goes on to quote Bob Hope, showing how not all good quotes come from the far past, but many
good observations are in the here and now. He ties in the events of the globe, pointing out the
poverty existing in our modern world. He calls to everyone in the crowd to be a fellow man to
their neighbor. After pointing out how inaction by government agents can damaging to the
people they are sworn to serve, he uses current events in Birmingham, Alabama to show that
their lack of action can be just as damaging. Dr. King points out their investment in these issues;
that it is the Congress of our nation (1964, p. 6) passing legislation that they will be
expected to follow. No action isnt the same as inaction though. Dr. King uses his philosophy
of nonviolence (1964, p. 7) to describe how refusing to react to violence with violence can be a
method of protest that works within the bounds of the law. He uses his grasp on psychology and
philosophy to demonstrate a learned way of dealing with the government that is more active than
waiting for the next election to roll around. He gets his listeners not only engaged and invested
in his speech, but gives them the tools needed to become involved in the civil movement. Dr.
King was a teacher. He addresses classrooms that extended over fields, bridges, races, classes,
and years. He couldnt do that without the liberal arts though. He brought the message of civil
justice to each student and used common shared knowledge to start a lesson and expanded them
to help his students see the whole picture. He even says Students by the thousands have taken
ourpassionate yearnings for freedom, and filtered them in their own souls (1964, p. 9). He
knows that his is bringing a new view of the world to the listening ears of these students.and
those lessons stay with them for a lifetime in their hearts and minds.

REFLECTION ON MY EDUCATION

My Comprehension: Impact on Future Students Learning

The liberal arts are at their core a shared foundational knowledge that tie all free thinkers
together. Understanding this gives us a connection to many of the people we will encounter in
our professional field, whether we are connection with patients and clients or with colleagues.
This foundation in liberal arts can help inspire our curiosity to explore the many different facets
of our profession, strengthening our knowledge of how everything relates within that profession.
Just knowing how to calculate a BMI or being able to recite all the muscular nomenclature of the
body wouldnt be a stable or reliable source of dietetic knowledge. Nor would a client feel
comfortable with a dietician that could discuss a kosher diabetic diet at length, but was unable to
explain to them why a diabetic diet mattered to them. Our skills as a professional are only as
strong as the foundation it is built on. Holes in that foundation will cause us to fail and crumble.
As we meet with clients or patients, having this fuller knowledge base will give us more
to draw on to connect to each unique meeting. Many times clients like to share something they
know or saw or heard. Confirming and talking about a shared piece of information helps them
feel connected to you and more likely for them to invest themselves in a relationship with you.
Clients want someone who will see past their name on an insurance form or WIC application and
see them for the human they are. The skills that liberals arts teach in the foundational general
education and in communication help us reach our clients first as the people they are and
secondly as the listening students they be.
In order to strengthen my ability to teach from the liberal arts perspective, I need to
continue to reach outside my world view. Many times my ability to listen and connect is
hampered by my inability to place myself in a clients place. I have learned that I should listen
and I know many of the basic outlines of other peoples life experiences, but I should never stop

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learning. A weak knowledge in a religion can lead to a misunderstanding. A poor grasp on a

cultures history could lead to an unintentional breach of social expectations or a dismissal of folk
healing in favor of modern higher learned procedures. The liberal arts is about having a wellrounded view of foundational subjects so you can reach out and connect with most people. Its a
puzzle made from a million, billion, trillion individual pieces and there are always more to find.
If I ever stop searching for the next hidden puzzle piece, I am the one that is cheating myself out
of being the best dietitian I can be.

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9
References

King, M. L. (1964). The American dream. Drew University, Madison, New Jersey