{"id":36,"date":"2016-10-14T15:42:20","date_gmt":"2016-10-14T15:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/academic-news\/?p=36"},"modified":"2016-10-14T15:43:25","modified_gmt":"2016-10-14T15:43:25","slug":"advice-for-seniors-exercise-the-mind-to-prepare-for-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/academic-news\/2016\/10\/14\/advice-for-seniors-exercise-the-mind-to-prepare-for-college\/","title":{"rendered":"Advice for Seniors: Exercise the Mind to Prepare for College"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Students react to Mr. Sarat’s engaging talk.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cTo prepare for college, you need move beyond just spitting out what you\u2019ve memorized or read,\u201d Amherst College professor Austin Sarat told seniors the morning of October 14 in Assembly. \u201cYou need to actually think. And then you need to take it one step farther and think against<\/em> your idea.\u201d Sarat, who is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, described this process as a form of resistance training that is essential for reasoning and thinking independently in college. \u201cWhen your teachers here question what you are writing or saying, they are the equivalent of your strength and training coaches,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sarat asked the audience of seniors and a panel, which included Head of School Robert W. Hill, Theater Director Emily Ditkovski, and Math Teacher Carey Baldwin, to come up with arguments and counter-arguments for a number of hypothetical scenarios. For example, if a student steals a book from the library, but minutes later learns it was \u201cTake any book you like from the library day,\u201d should the student be punished for his actions? Was a rule actually broken?<\/p>\n

As various answers were debated, Sarat reinforced the importance of listening carefully, actively thinking versus waiting for a classmate or teacher to reveal \u201cthe answer,\u201d and cultivating these habits now to prepare for the rigors of college classes.<\/p>\n

Sarat similarly urged thoroughness when offering seniors a collection of his rules for reading and writing in college. \u201cReading is mental exercise. Some of it will be easy and fun. Some of it will be hard and no fun. The harder the reading, the more valuable it is to your intellectual development,\u201d he said. \u201cReading something once and fast is merely \u2018horizontal eye exercise,\u2019\u201d he added, asking students to think of reading the way they think of fitness, acting, or other pursuits. \u201cYou don\u2019t just practice your lines for the play once, right?\u201d he said. \u201cThe same is true of reading well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sarat closed by reminding seniors of the importance of daily practice. \u201cWriting, reading, thinking\u2026practice these habits every day here at Williston,\u201d he said. \u201cDon\u2019t skip a day. They will prepare you for college.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cTo prepare for college, you need move beyond just spitting out what you\u2019ve memorized or read,\u201d Amherst College professor Austin Sarat told seniors the morning of October 14 in Assembly. \u201cYou need to actually think. And then you need to take it one step farther and think against your idea.\u201d Sarat, who is the William … Continue reading Advice for Seniors: Exercise the Mind to Prepare for College<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academics-speaker"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/academic-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/academic-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/academic-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/academic-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/academic-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/academic-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/academic-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/39"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/academic-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/academic-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/academic-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}