I agree that safe spaces are necessary, especially during a time when there is such political extremism. For example, a Muslim might truly benefit from having somewhere they can go to simply escape the negative assumptions made against them by strangers– which can sometimes even lead to death threats. But providing safe spaces can help anyone from any community feel safe. Why should they be just for babies? I can’t help but wonder how privileged some of the people protesting safe spaces must be if they can’t even imagine an adult who would truly want and benefit from it.

Another idea to help with professional networking is to help pin down an “elevator pitch.” For anyone who has not heard of this before, it’s the concept that you and someone important (e.g. a researcher you admire who is attending the same conference you are) are in an elevator. In the 30 seconds that you can have their undivided attention, explain your research to them. While this goes against what we were told in the Communicating Science workshop, the concept is simple and easy to practice for those of us who are more shy so that we can communicate our research ideas to new people we meet. While at first it might be very “scripted,” you can get more conversational with more practice. In fact, I met a girl at a workshop who said that she used to have a very hard time connecting with people at conferences, so she started practicing her elevator pitch when she traveled (e.g. whoever she sat next to on the plane or people she ran into in the airports). From all this practice, she got so good at her elevator pitch that she was able to impress some company bigwig so much that he gave her an internship that let her fulfill her dream of traveling internationally for an extended period of time!

I think much like the general high school classes, as we discussed in class last week, the quality of AP classes can very widely from school from school– and even from class to class. For example, I also took several AP classes in high school, and I felt very well-prepared for those subjects in college. In fact, my AP Spanish class was harder than almost any Spanish course I took as an undergad. However, I would agree with you that these AP classes do not prepare students for the huge amount of freedom they’re given as a result of the every-other-day class schedules. In fact, as I was beginning my undergraduate studies, I remember this being the most discussed reason why the first year of undergrad is hard, and I think they’re right. It gives students a lot of responsibility and free time at the same time, forcing them to become much more self-disciplined than ever before. I agree that this kind of skill is something that truly can only be learned through experience and practice.

I think the reason why going through multiple cycles of higher education may be because we as a society value doing over learning. That is, we learn so that we can do, which is the valuable piece of it. However, I also believe that we can always learn new things in other ways. We can learn through hands-on experiences, conferences workshops, tutorials, videos, discussions (as we are now), reflection, and introspection. Although, I would agree that today’s society is much less focused on reflections and introspection (and perhaps even discussion) than societies from the past, which I think is a side effect of having very fast-paced lived that don’t easily allow the time for such activities.