Monday, August 30, 2010

Perspective.

As always, I hope my readers will keep in mind that my blog is purely a representation of my own thoughts and musings, and to the best of my belief, nobody else has any undue influence on what I write.

It's been quite a while since I last posted, and much of this has been due to my own internal conflict. A new school year has just gotten underway, and although I love being back at RSU full time, it was a bit of a transition for me. I'm no longer the SGA Parliamentarian (Good luck, Philip!), and have gone back to being an elected senator, which is wonderful. I'm learning to take a less direct approach to SGA while employing the opposite tactic when it comes to homework. And, best of all, I've had the opportunity to talk to several new students about how they're looking forward to having a successful academic career at Rogers State.

Contemplating these changes has given me a newfound appreciation for the word perspective.

Perspective is, in my understanding (get it?), your personal viewpoint, your interpretation of the relationships between several subjects, or how you interrelate your ideas and concepts. This is important to me because I feel that while the topics we discuss within SGA meetings have limited effect, i.e. they have a point of origin and an end point, the way that we discuss them and how we interact together can have lasting effects.

When it comes to new ideas, new legislation, new proposals, it's so tempting to become entrenched in the known and familiar. Sometimes this can cause stagnation, and it becomes increasingly difficult to approach the new, the untested, and the uncertain. This stagnation makes it almost laughably easy for external influences to assert their own agendas over our potential, and we are left wondering who is really the voting body in a student government where the members are not encouraged to think for themselves, or to think of the students whom they represent.

I openly admit that I am not immune to these influences. Several times throughout my membership in SGA I've found myself at the brink of a decision, wondering what path I took to get there, fearful that I've either lost it or never truly had one to begin with. I've learned to appreciate those sharp moments of clarity when I remember to question myself, to question my motives, and to think outside of the confines of the four walls where our meetings take place.

Lately, each time I meet a new student, I've tried to genuinely consider how best I can help that one person through my involvement in SGA. A good example of this is a conversation I had with someone who confided in me that they had no academic advisor, and didn't know how to go about being assigned to one. This student was enrolled in classes, looking forward to seeing the semester through, but also worried that they wouldn't know best which classes to continue enrolling in on their own. I had a few ideas for how to go about finding an academic advisor, which I shared, and I directed this person to the Enrollment office, because I know that's where I started when I had similar questions and was new to this university. However, I don't think that this student should have to face that confusion and anxiety, and it brought me back to a question that I've struggled with throughout my entire (and considerably lengthy) academic career. Is there no one here who wants to help me?

I hope that when SGA meets this year, we will keep this question in mind. How many individuals on our campus would be willing to help us feel better prepared for college and everything that college includes? How many of those individuals would you accept help from? In a perfect world there would only be one answer: Everyone. Regardless of the answer, I will try to keep my perspective in check. I will try to be mindful of the external influences that attempt to sway my judgment, and I'll be on this blog, trying to help.

3 comments:

  1. Is there no one here who wants to/can help me? I feel that way often

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  3. I find that the most important thing to begin with is trying to find someone who can help. In my experience, quite a few of us forget that there are others who have an answer to the questions we have.

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