Personal Essay
If you take a look in my man room/ home office you will find the walls decorated with Boy Scout accomplishments, photos of camping and fishing, and a few unfinished projects from electronics to fire arm parts. Needless to say I have a passion for learning my book shelf contains history of the west, the founding fathers written works and letters, ham radio antenna manuals, histories of countries of the world, and various how to books or project manuals. Needless to say I have passions from one end of the spectrum to the other. I attended a small high school and was taught to read material and subject and to form my own opinion and ideas basically how to think for myself and assess both sides to each argument or idea.
My own self described learning style would be an even mix of hands on and understanding theory or ideas. Most of my higher education was focused on technical subjects, somewhat ridged rules involved but a lot of theory behind the rules. I have improved myself vastly by self study and reading on my own. I have found the hallowed halls of higher learning to leave a lot to be desired in past experiences. Either the instructor has one ridged view point or outlook on things or opposing viewpoints contrary to theirs seemed to be graded on a stricter scale. This is not the case for all schools or instructors but on classes that deal with ideas and politics I have found this to be the case.
The first assessment I used was The Learning Style Inventory (Bixler, 2010) overall assessment aligns me with a visual learner. I have to agree and disagree with the assessment most subjects I learn better visually, but if the subject is heavy in math or facts I am more of a tactile learner. The second assessment I used The Center for New Discoveries in Learning (2012) the assessment placed me as a visual learner again. I agree with both assessments in the majority of the time, but different subjects will require different ways of learning. I know...