Hands-on education that makes an impact

 Ever since I was young, I have always loved being a student and getting the chance to learn. Whether it was reading books any chance I could get or being the first to raise my hand in class, learning has always felt like a superpower. It is something that helps me understand the world around me and to make sense of it in a more meaningful way than I could before. Coming to college, I was excited to continue my learning adventure, especially now that I could study subjects that interested me, ultimately majoring in history and theatre. What I did not anticipate was that the classes I would take at DU would expand my knowledge in ways that I could have never imagined through their commitment to experiential learning.

In high school, I always learned in a classroom. A teacher would lecture at the class with a powerpoint, or maybe a Kahoot, if we were lucky. At DU, I experienced the complete opposite, with engaging professors and ways to tangibly connect to the course material. Through my history and theatre classes, I have sewn a skirt, built furniture from scratch, aided people released from an ICE detention center,  researched a forgotten WWII veteran and written a blurb for his funeral service. 

While these examples of experiential learning may not specifically reflect every DU student’s academic experience, it does a great job of showing that our education goes beyond us as an individual. For me, I always saw history as a thing of the past, but my experiential learning and volunteering has helped me see how understanding history is vital to understanding our contemporary world. It is a living and breathing study that evolves by the day, rather than just a bunch of deceased figures in wigs declaring edicts. 

Experiential learning is the most engaging and realistic education I have been able to do, giving me skills and experiences that I will remember for the rest of my life, and I could not be more grateful that I have the chance to do “hands-on” learning (even though Kahoot is fun every once in a while).