Welcome to your journey…

Welcome to your journey, through this online “textbook”, through your classes, and through building the habits and skills that will sustain positive learning experiences throughout college and beyond.

The way we will frame the ensuing text about learning, reading, writing, research, and college life in general is through the metaphor and real experience of a journey. Like all trips, this book will have a beginning and an end, with a middle that will provide many insights and stories from our teaching that are hopefully memorable because they relate to your own experience. In fact, one premise of this book is that all meaningful reading and writing is personally motivated in some way: motivated by your connections, motivated by your passions and interests as students. And although your college journey will come to an end in four, five, or six years, we hope that the lessons, practices, and habits that you will learn and practice through this interactive textbook will transfer to many courses, and beyond to many life situations in your career and elsewhere.

We would like to start this journey by first preparing you with the mindsets that will empower you to grow and learn through various college situations that you will encounter. To properly develop these mindsets, it’s important to start with a fundamental question: What is learning, and how do we learn best?