Socratic Seminar Reflection

5/04/16

Prompts:

• Explain how the past four Socratic Seminars have influenced your thinking about Tuesdays with Morrie and life in general.

• What trends did you notice with yourself and your personal goals for each seminar? How did your personal goal(s) change and what did you actively do to change throughout our last four discussions?

• What trends did you notice with the class for each seminar? What did you notice that helped or hindered a specific seminar?

The seminars made me really think about the world around us. This is because as we were talking about things like admiring/examining the world around you, forgiving others then yourself, and learning how to die, it really change my perspective on how I live. Before the book I never really thought the world around me was as important as I think it is now. The book has taught me many things, and through the seminars I also learned a lot of things, for example, why don't we act when people are yelling their guts out for help and why second place is really not that bad. Both I have thought of before the seminar, but the seminar extended my thinking about those topics and left me more educated about them than before the seminar.

The obvious trend that I had with my personal goals was actually getting involved in the seminar. I didn't really achieve my goal during the socratic seminar. This is because I was very anxious and nervous to talk or discuss what I had jotted down on my notes. It was also because I was very hesitant to discuss my notes, and most of the time I never really found the opportunity to discuss the notes. In all honesty, I am really not satisfied with myself and wish I did a better job.

A trend I noticed is that when the class starting discussing a certain topic it lead into another and so on. I think this most likely caused by Morrie's aphorisms. I think this because his aphorisms are really thought provoking and can have the ability to branch out into many different topics. I think the topics that the aphorisms can bring up is what helped the seminar flow better. It compelled more people to get involved into the conversation/discussion.