This week’s unlecture was quite interesting. Following a similar pattern, it was unlike the last two in that it was not as interactive and open as last week but not as ranty as first week. However it still inspired some great thinking in me.

The reptilian brain concept was sort of funky à we all have a fight or flight instinct that is entirely instinctual and prehistoric in a way; deeply embedded into our human nature. It can be applied to almost anything; for example my anxieties about my workload this semester (uni work, internships, jobs etc) is something I can either tackle head-on or completely run away and hide from. The more I use my flight instinct against it the more it will overwhelm me, so my lizard brain is telling me that fight is the right option. Thanks, lizard brain!

I enjoyed Adrian’s rant about how modern education is too similar to a ‘shop assistant’ style of learning; we go into a store (or uni) and try pick what we like (e.g. decide on a course/what we want to learn/our goals) and if it doesn’t work for us (if we feel our teachers, lectures, classes aren’t working), it’s so easy to blame the shop assistant (uni) and demand another size or style. That was a bit confusing to type but I completely understand it in my head; that university is too similar to a retail environment; we shop and choose what we want then complain if it isn’t right for us.

However, what we should be concertrating on is that if we feel that something in our courses isn’t working for us, like our teachers, classes, lectures, assignments, it is our responsibility to make it work, not to complain about it. We should see what we can get out of it, not complain about what we don’t.

Education is an experience, not a commodity or a right.

I thought that was pretty insightful seeing as I see so many people complaining about uni but clearly RMIT has some sort of successful system in place if thousands of kids are graduating and getting prestigious jobs every year…

Like a romantic waltz (I’m loving Adrian’s metaphors), we shouldn’t give up and stop dancing just because we’re finding the steps difficult or foreign to us.

This lecture was different and I’m still deciding whether or not it worked for me, but nonetheless I’m excited for next week’s.