Famous Last Words: Make Learning Great Again!

The logo to my organization, CBF.

(Source: We made this logo!)

Two years ago, I started an organization on campus called Catalyst for a Better Future (CBF) with some of my friends. You can read more about the organization at oucbf.org, but our main goal is provide academic resources and guidance to students in the Norman area that are considered to be
"underprivileged" or "at-risk", focusing on reaching out to first-generation students and students from low-income homes. One way we strive to do this is by providing tutoring sessions throughout our different partnerships, so I have been tutoring K-12 students for a couple of years now and I have taught many kids of varying socioeconomic standings, backgrounds, and lifestyles.

I've been reflecting about my time in CBF since I sadly have to give it up after I graduate this year and I wanted to share one thing that I realized. One of the biggest obstacles that I have to help every student overcome no matter if they come from a wealthy family or if they do not have a family or home at all, is the fact that social norms make people believe is that it is not fun or cool to learn. I always ask my students if they would rather be the most popular kid in the school or the smartest kid in the school and no one ever says the latter. Kids see learning as being forced to do endless worksheets of busy work that forces them to regurgitate an endless amount of facts, instead of it being the journey to answering their questions or making sense of the world. I even bought into this notion when I was in high school and it made me see learning as a burden or a chore instead of something that I can use to strengthen my capability to help others in the future. It wasn't until I got to college and I got to learn about things that I was interested in that I realized that I missed out on truly absorbing and interacting with the information that my teachers in high school tried so hard to get across to me.

Ever since I started buckling down on teaching my kids to never sacrifice an opportunity to learn just to look cool, I became much more confident in academia. I learned to never be afraid to reach out to professors, to always take part in class discussions, to ask questions when I had them, and to never be afraid to teach others about the things that I'm interested in. Be fearless in the pursuit of the answers to your questions.