Final Post - A Reflection

In the final hours of my last class, final semester, and end of my undergraduate experience, I have to pause and reflect on my experience in education here at CSUN.  I started college in 1980 and today in 2017, much as changed. My final class "Multigenre Literacy in a Global Context" turned out to be the most perfect end to my university journey.

Beginning my education in the pre-digital age, much of my learning was spent memorizing, spelling and re-writing papers, not for content, but for typos. Today, this is far from what is expected from me as a student. Never in my life did I think I would be sitting in a classroom with each student having access to an individual computer. Or surfing the web for film clips, or clicking links in real time for group presentations. No one in this class, except perhaps Mr. Wexler, could understand the reality of how much of a change this is, and how the computer age has affected our lives. Fellow classmates may hear stories of typewriters and carbon paper, or pagers and walkmans, but they will never understand how easy communication is today compared to thirty years ago.

But the most interesting part of taking college courses over a few decades is finding out that the information we learn evolves from generation to generation. Our content as well as form change. Facts get manipulated according to our ideology. And today is no exception. I grew up during a time when communication meant "wait", and patience was a lesson that had to be learned. Now, due to the global economy and digital age of communication, no has the patience to wait. Waiting is a thing of the past.

I think being in college at an older age was a great thing. It pushed me into asking questions, learning about the digital world, and embracing globalization in a way that if I had not continued my studies, would have been too intimidating to investigate. "Multigenre Literacy in a Global Context" was the perfect class to take in my senior year, because brought my past and present together, andit prepared me for future. And now that I am graduating into the 21st Century world, I think this class may have helped me the most.