In this article, I talked about my studies at Harvard. Maybe someone dreams of joining, then this article is for you.
Mentors and tutors
While attending other colleges, students frequently wonder themselves, "Did I chosen the proper specialty?" Do I feel at ease in this line of work? Is it really my choice, or is it the result of parental or societal pressure? Or does the knowledge I've gained fulfill my expectations?
Even "adults" don't seem to ask these questions, in my opinion. In America, students are not only continually seeking solutions to these concerns, but they also have a full army of "assistants" - tutors and mentors - at their disposal at institutions.
In my opinion, the usual in life was to graduate from high school at the age of 16, immediately enroll in university (or else you are a loser), complete your studies (or else you are a loser), and then go to work and establish a family (or else who are you?). There is no such thing as a linear life path for Americans or Europeans. Many of my international friends changed their majors, attended university multiple times, took vacations from their studies to gain a better understanding of themselves, searched for their calling, and picked a profession at the age of 30.
Mentors, like psychologists, assist students in discovering themselves more quickly.
They debate topics, personal goals, and the best courses and extracurricular activities together. Tutors are more concerned with assisting the student in mastering the subject. Tutors and mentors, on the other hand, do not learn to be. Social tradition and personal examples govern this. Education, whether valuable or not, prestigious or not prestigious, means nothing if you don't understand why you need it.
Work in a group
When preparing for classes, taking notes, or writing an exam, students study independently at home. Personally, I write my paper at home on various subjects, so-called essays. The autonomous sorts of work come to an end here. Everything else is done as part of a class discussion or a group project.
If the conversation takes place in class, the teacher moderates it; if the discussion takes place in groups (while completing a task), the students themselves moderate it. That is the main distinction. Individualism is vital to Americans, but teamwork requires professionalism. A group can do more than the smartest individual. However, collaboration isn't always simple. Even in the United States, the relevance of this notion is shown in the popularity of sports in schools and institutions. In US educational institutions, they teach a feeling of a common aim, well-coordinated teamwork, overcoming contentious situations, and collaborative effort for a common goal.
Copyright protection
At Harvard, there is a strong feeling of respect and decency. Particularly in regard to copyright. It is a disgrace to copy, pilfer abstracts, and rework thoughts from a book. Expulsion from university is one of the penalties for plagiarism. A significant number of class discussions assist you in forming your own opinion, so you actively participate in class not only because you are interested, but also to form your opinion for test work.
The right to choose when monitoring
You yourself choose the topics for presentations, projects, speeches. You even choose the questions you want to answer on the exam. In Ukraine, students usually prepare 100-200 questions for the exam, and the lottery of life will offer you a few answers. Moreover, your opinion on the exam is highly undesirable. You translate someone's conclusions as “close to the text” as possible. At Harvard, we had either a test version of the exam (a list of questions with several answers, one of which is correct), or an explanation of the question / phenomenon (you choose, for example, 5 terms out of 10), but it is mandatory to write an essay (you also choose one topic from several proposed). In your essay, you will highlight the different opinions of scientists, compare them and express your own opinion on all this. Of course, a deep justification is fundamentally important, and only this will be assessed from the point of view of the reliability of your conclusions. However, the feeling of comfort and the ability to choose a question for the exam on your own teaches you to make the right choice.
