Being a part of Mount Mercy’s organization has taught me many things in the four years that I have been here. It has taught me what it means to be part of something bigger than myself, the importance of giving back to the community around, and how easy it can be to make a difference in our world. All of these things, and many more, have influenced the way I think critically, communicate, serve the common good, and participate in the world around me. Some of these skills were learned through my nursing classes, but many were learned through the coursework of the core curriculum classes I was able to take while at Mount Mercy University.
Think Critically It was always my impression that I would eventually learn to critically think when …show more content…
I was taking a political science honors class for my Global Awareness domain. This class looked at the different governments around the world, and compared them to each other while learning their systems. This class probably challenged me more than any class I have taken along this journey. I think a large reason this class was so challenging for me was because it required me to not just learn the information, but learn it in a way that I could analyze it and apply it in different circumstances. Learning the way a government functions is not that difficult of a task, but when you have to be able to critically think about which government works better in the different situations, it requires a higher level of critical thinking that I had not yet developed. As the course progressed through the semester, I was able to do this much quicker and was much more efficient in analyzing different government …show more content…
This skill started being fine-tuned in each of my classes, as I interacted with the professors and my classmates. Reflecting back on my journey, I think the class that had the largest impact with this was definitely my study abroad class to the European Union. When I was put into situations where I was not able to fully use my verbal communication to express myself, I realized how much we actually rely on nonverbal communication on a daily basis. Even when we were in non-English speaking countries and atmospheres, I was still able to communicate pretty effectively. Some things took a little longer to reach the point, but it worked. Non-verbal communication is so much more than just our body language and gestures. It involves the culture and atmosphere around us. This was learned the hard way while in France. The French value the quiet. A normal tone of voice is almost what we consider to be a whisper here. There were multiple times that we were given looks, or even shushed because we were being inappropriately loud for the