Learning to Learn
Terry Carroll describes how his experiences in large classes at NC State taught him how to learn.
Interview on 2011-04-22 00:00:00 -0400
Transcript
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Between life, NC State, and UNCG I'll say it this way:
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I realize in retrospect I've gotten a hell of a good education,
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okay, and I have to give them all equal due, not just State.
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But I've been very fortunate in that education. Now with that,
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as someone who's taught at Appalachian I can see some similarities and differences between State
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and I don't agree with the large classes. That's a bad idea for a lot of reasons
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but I understand the economics of it.
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But the one thing that it does teach you to do is survive. To learn on your own.
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So while that's not necessarily the best way there's value there
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and then of course we had a lot of great courses. Both schools, I've had some phenomenal professors,
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and there have been poor ones too.
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When you got people like Kelly and Petrea and Norm Anderson and any number of professors,
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and then you have a lot of young professors who were not that different than you and really could still know where you were
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were but maybe didn't cross the boundary but would get up next to it in terms of relationships; that was nice. You get that.
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So I think that as I look back, I'm sitting here doing theoretical work on thermodynamics and optics and I say, how do I know that?
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Where did that come from? And I think it has to go back to the schools and of course, you know, learning to learn.
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That's a very big deal. You get static and you're stuck there,
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and of course as you get older you tend to get static more frequently, but we won't go there.
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But I would say that that exposure.
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The one that I think that--not the one thing but one of the big things--is problem solving.
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I realize that my experiences, you know, State had a lot of labs,
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even though you could do them ahead of time and go in and turn them in, which is kind of bad,
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but anyway a lot of good labs,
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and then it just being the '60s and early '70s you had all the social stuff
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and you saw professors on a different level, and there were a lot of professors that had issues with the war.
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I think grade inflation came along at the time. If I were a professor realizing if I'm going to give this guy a grade that maybe he earned but that that would be his meal ticket into the army,
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that's stressful for the professors. Why do you want that responsibility?
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So I think there was a lot of things very positive about that.
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I think learning to think, learning to get information, I think networking with people,
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all those were good, and I still have a deep love for NC State.
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I mean the alma mater always kind of makes me tingle, so I feel that way. I feel that way about service and the American flag as well, so, you know, they're right there.
This video is an excerpt from a longer interview. Contact the Special Collections Research Center to request the transcript of the full interview.