Ailyn Maung

Ethn 21
Hnou Lee
Oct. 1st
Online Session, Week 7
Meiland & Wagner

For this week's reading it was based on the readings from Meiland: The Difference
Between High School and College, and Wagner: Rigor Refined. Both readings discussed their
overall experiences of being taught about certain subjects and how they themselves got along
to understand the material being taught or relevant to their classes/situation.
In my own experience, in middle school I struggled a lot with my teachers. Specifically,
my math teacher during the 8th grade. My teacher during that time struggled to teach students
the material because of how “rebelious” students were, and how hard it was to truly gather their
attention. Since my teacher struggled to gather their attention and to get my fellow peers to
quiet down, she was unable to actually get any time during class to teach. With not being taught
the class material, I was still given assignments to complete. In the beginning of the school year,
I had struggled to understand the course material since I was not taught and my teacher did not
give any resources to get tutored or helped. After a certain amount of time, enough had become
enough and I understood that I had to help myself when it came to understanding the course
material. From there, I began to teach myself the math material so I could succeed and excel in
that class. With time, I understood every assignment and was very impressed with myself, I also
began to help my fellow peers and made sure that they understood the material as well. Overall,
I am glad I was able to teach myself and others what my own teacher could not do. It is because
of this experience that I now have a love for math, so long as I understand the course material.
This experience sticks out to me from my other own personal learning experiences
because it taught me several things about myself; that I can achieve anything that I put my time
and dedication towards, that so long as I reach out to resources about my struggles I can
succeed, and sometimes depending on yourself rather than others is a good thing. I think it
reflects on the way I learn today because sometimes even when I struggle with a subject, it is
still hard for me to reach out to other resources since I would rather try and teach myself the
material first.