As a first time self-directed learner, this semester has been an eye opening experience as to how much I do not actually take control of my learning. I had all these ideas and plans that I would use to further my learning but unfortunately I did not use many of them. I wonder how far I would have gotten with the language had I not had Mirwais as my language partner. This experience has helped me to reconsider how I will go forward with acquiring knowledge within the academic realm but outside of the standard American academic setting to which I have become accustomed.
While I have definitely increased my knowledge of Persian over the semester by ten fold, I feel as though I could have put a lot more energy and effort into having better command of the language. As far as being a self-directed learner, I have found that when I am presented with an agenda from someone else more experienced, I fall back and let them do what they want for the most part. I'm not particularly fond of that but it is what it is and the first step to changing anything is to acknowledge it. I found that I did not speak up as much when I felt like things were moving too fast and as a result, I fell behind due to frustration. This led to me just coasting through the rest of the semester and putting more energy into other courses and my campus employment.
Reflecting upon it now I can see how similar my situation is to that of a student that I mentor at Henderson middle school. Since he has trouble reading and comprehension of what he's read, he gets frustrated with trying and gives up, distracting himself with other things. My experience in trying to learning Persian has helped me to empathize better with my student in regard to his work, this in turn has helped me to get less internally frustrated with him and thus has made me a better mentor because I can better understand where he's coming from.
All of that being said, there is more work to be done and hopefully I will be able to better accomplish my goals of reading Iranian poetry and translating it in the future as I intend to pursue my self-directed learning after graduation. With less things going on, I think I will be able to have more discipline with my Persian language studies.
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