This week was the final week of my Voices of Discovery, and
as I trekked up to the third floor of Slagle, I couldn’t help but be relieved.
The entire experience felt like a waste of time. The conversations never really took off
because I’m not sure anybody really wanted to be there and the facilitators
just didn’t ask the right questions. Two hours is simply too long. My mind kept
wandering to the 40 pages of reading I still had to do, the papers I had to
write, basically anything that I could have been doing other than be at Voices
of Discovery.
I’m not alone in annoyance at the program. Whenever I told
my friends that I had it, they responded with similar experiences of having to
go for a class and not getting much out of it. They too were frustrated with
conversations that never seemed to go anywhere and watching subpar Ted Talks.
One of the problems with it is that nothing happens next. There is no follow
up, nothing to keep it going. It just falls flat.
Voices of Discovery is a great idea in theory, but it is
poorly executed. The program needs some serious revising, including shortening
the time and adding more follow up and interactive activities. Those running
the program need to reevaluate the goals and work to make it more beneficial to
the students involved, or else, it isn’t worth keeping.
Katie, This is actually really helpful to here. I think the challenge is finding the best way to implement the program. I would have liked to hear more in your post about the kinds of conversations you had and the kinds of you would have preferred. Would you be open to sharing more?
ReplyDeleteI think the facilitators had trouble starting a conversation. It was more like they would ask a question and we would answer without any interaction between us, or they would ask a question and we wouldn't see where they were going and sit there until somebody said something.
ReplyDeleteOn the first day, we had an overview of everything we were going to talk about. As a result, we didn't talk much about anything. The questions felt disjointed and the conversation never took off. As much as I hate them, I think that doing some ice breakers was needed that first night because it is difficult to have conversations about race with people you met 10 minutes ago. We also talked a lot about stereotypes and Americans.
I wish we would have talked more about our campus, the international student's perspective of it, and how to bridge the gap between international students and US-born to make it a better experience overall.