On Wednesday evening, I attended the Rose Cafe hosted by House Fellow Cynthia Hill. To be completely honest, I went in not knowing what the topic was. But as she started, it slowly became clear and the conversation was very exciting. Cynthia started on the topic of reflecting on your written work and then allowed us as the audience to provide input and get to the point of the talk by ourselves.

Cognitive goals. That was my key takeaway. When I’m given a writing assignment, it’s usually a vague topic. I’ll create an outline and just write with hopes to reach the word count and get a good grade. However, I really didn’t think about the goal of an assignment. What is the cognitive goal? Why am I doing this assignment?

Cynthia really made me think about extending myself and really getting an education rather than a degree. Learn from each assignment I complete rather than finish hurriedly and do it to get the grade. Take some time to consider all of the grader’s comments and learn from them, not just to earn a better grade on the next assignment, but also to truly learn from all the mistakes and improve overall.