Tell Your Story
The instructions for this assignment ask me to explore and divulge information on the standards that are most important in my life. The instructions authorized me to focus on the critical standards or the non-critical standards discussed in the text. As I contemplated how best to complete the assignment, it occurred to me that I couldn't chose the standards by which I live because the standards chose me. Over the years I shifted slightly between the two sets of standards but my personality, character and motives required me to focus on and live up to the standards of critical thinking. Of course, I had no understanding of the standards or that I even needed them as a child. For years I never even questioned things like that. The closest I came to assigning a definition to the concept didn't come to me until many years later. I came to know it as my comfort zone. Understanding it happened even later.I am the third of four children born to parents living the American dream. Young, in love, struggling financially with their growing family, but intensely happy. My older sister and my brother both are outgoing, fun-loving, thrill seeking, never sit still, energy filled monsters that seemingly dedicated their entire existence to making my younger sister and I absolutely miserable. They were good at their work. My little sister and I were polar opposites quiet, reserved, well behaved...you know...the good kids. How and why does any of this matter? None of us kids chose how we think, what keeps us entertained, or how we behaved. Looking back I can see the changes in each of us as we grew up, but what did not change significantly in either of us was the comfort zones we fell into early in life.
I've taken the long way to finally get to addressing the subject, but I believe that even as a child I was accountable to critical thinking standards. I toggled between critical and noncritical occasionally but never completely and never for long. When I did, it usually created internal conflicts. For example, I loved baseball and I was a good all around player. I played every year until high school. As much as I loved to play, things like competition (talking trash before the game, overly celebrating the win, or excusing away the loss) and the pure excitement and happiness that came with just being able to play the game,somehow eluded me. For me, enjoyment came from learning strategy, learning to play multiple positions, and trying to perfect my swing. At first, I felt different than the other kids almost to the point of feeling as though I did not fit in. Now I know that I adjusted my thinking about the game as well as how I interacted with the other kids to put me back in my comfort zone. I kept the scorebook, helped with the line up and even coached the bases which allowed me to apply rational, reasonable, logical and consistent standards to game. I had no concept of it then, but today I see what happened as self protection. I played until my first year of high school.
Just before my freshman year in high school, I met a girl. I was instantly smitten. She was outgoing, popular, was intent to get the most fun out of every moment and took nothing very seriously. She was different than me in almost every way. And, she was beautiful. I was hooked! But somehow things felt awkward. Unlike what happened to me as a kid playing baseball. This time it was my ultimate goal to change from my normal reserved, almost shy, self and fit into hers. I sent six years trying to get past that awkward feeling and while I learned to hide it a bit better, it never went away. What did happen during that six years is I did things differently and lived on her terms because she was so important to me, that I lost touch with myself. By the time I graduated high school, my grades had fallen some and I knew something was wrong. Still unable to figure it out, I pushed forward according to my rational, logical plan and started college. I endured two miserable years getting bad grades while learning almost nothing. It was then my parents got worried and started talking to me about my future, a subject we had discussed often but not recently. They were concerned about lot of things of course but focused on how my thinking had changed. They wanted to know why the things that were most important to me for so long could change so drastically. I wasn't working on my plan at all. I had to admit that I did not know. But they did. They encouraged me to do something positive for me. As screwed up as my head was by then I decided to talk to an Air Force recruiter. My conversation with the recruiter felt more right than anything had in a long time. Less than eight months later I was an Airman in the United States Air Force and I never looked back.
I became interested in human behavior and did enough self study and reading to believe that if what you are doing on the outside doesn't match with what you expect or feel on the inside, you can become conflicted. Conflict can become dysfunction. To correct it simply required that I find my comfort zone. The Air Force was exactly what I needed. Fast forward to today. I have been retired from the Air Force over ten years after a very successful and rewarding career. Recently, I left a job I did not enjoy and wondered what I should do next. The crazy idea that I go back to school resulted in my taking this course. I am beginning to understand that it is important in so many ways to learn what makes me tick, why I think the way I do, why I do the things I do. I didn't know of their existence before, but now I know that the standards of critical thinking apply naturally to me. I can experience things and apply non-critical thinking standards or even choose them to write about, but in my life I gravitate to the standards associated with critical thinking. I have learned that trying to force myself any other direction only takes me out of my comfort zone.
Reference:
Nosich, G. M. (2012). Learning to think things through: Critical thinking across the curriculum. Columbus, OH: Prentice Hall.
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