Throughout the book, What the Best College Students do, Bain talks about the different approaches to learning. He talks about what a strategic learner does in school and how they get good grades. A strategic learner learns what the instructor wants and does his/her best to meet those standards but doesn't learn for his/her own curiosity and knowledge. I always considered myself pretty intelligent, I didn't think I was the smartest in the whole class but I knew I wasn't dumb. I always got straight A's and if I didn't get an A I felt like a failure. Bain claims that strategic learners primarily focused on getting "good grades" and are scared to try something new because they don't want to "mess up their grade point average"(36) and I see myself in that quote. Throughout my schooling I often didn't take the hardest classes available, even though I knew I could do it, I was worried about not getting an A. Getting an A was all that mattered to me and once the class was over I rarely remember what I was taught because all I cared about was my grades. I was "innocently strategic"(37) because growing up I was taught to get good grades if you want to get into college and succeed in life so I assumed my way of learning was the right way. I never knew about the different approaches to learning I always thought that you get good grades because you are smart and you get bad grades either because you don't care or you aren't smart. I now know off all the different styles to learning and how I didn't get the most out of my education. How if I had taken control of my own education and became a deep learner I would have enjoyed school more and not been so stressed all the time worrying about keeping perfect grades. If I hadn't been so obsessed with my grades maybe I would actually remember what I was taught but unfortunately all I remember from most of my classes is that I got an A.
Bain, Ken. What the Best College Students Do. Cambridge,: Belknap of Harvard UP, 2012. Print.
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