Each semester provides students with new academic disciplines to help them learn new skills and consolidate their views on already known theories and practices. In particular, the educational institution helps learners develop personally and professionally. The course covered in this essay is RS 204: these were useful and productive lessons for emerging logical and critical thinking. This essay aims to discuss the RS 204 and justify why I deserve to be evaluated A.
It is no secret that in everyday life, people are often forced to accept quite a few different pieces of information coming from surrounding sources every second. Modern electronic and print media, social media, television, and radio are not only the mouthpieces of quality data but often fake news. Critical thinking skills are needed to analyze this information, according to our course. Previously, I believed that it was enough to evaluate the receiving information through the prism of my own experience and to make judgments about its reliability. However, our teacher was able to convince me of the contrary. If I were asked to define critical thinking now, I would say that it is a system of judgment used to analyze the data, allowing me to make my assessments and interpretations, and correctly apply the results to situations and problems. In other words, RS 204 has helped me become more confident in my thinking about this phenomenon.
It is worth saying that I sincerely loved this subject as it was not only about the theory of critical thinking but also its practical application. As part of this course, my classmates and I were offered ideas to help us look at everyday communication differently. Repeatedly I tried to apply the concepts I learned in real life. Meanwhile, I discovered that when people connect with each other, they tend to make false judgments and mistakes. Certainly, this is most often expressed in the use of sophisms and insinuations in order to impose one’s point of view, often unsupported by facts, on the other. In particular, there were non sequitur arguments that allow making judgments that have no logical basis. This is particularly noticeable now that the world is affected by coronavirus infection – supporters of conspiracy theories accusing the world government of appearing every day in the public arena. They manage to impose their beliefs, which do not demonstrate the rules of formal or informal logic, into immature minds.
In addition, the RS 204 has provided an opportunity to gain interdisciplinary knowledge about logical judgments. The world of the future, which is likely to be based on robots and automation, is entirely built on binary code based on mathematical logic. It must be admitted that this is a rather confusing topic, as it requires strict concentration and attention to the material. Nevertheless, thanks to the activity of our teacher, the material presented in Chapter 7 was feasible. Indeed, mastering was not easy, but I made an effort to understand the formal logic.
A considerable part of our course was occupied with the practical application of the investigated facts. My classmates and I were given assignments that tested how well each of us understood the topic we had studied. At the same time, errors allowed us to identify weaknesses to continue working on their elimination. I want to note that the constructed organization of classes fully satisfied my interests and needs. In the classroom, we did not only individual work that helped everyone to understand how close he or she was to the topic, but also collective work. This type of work was of particular interest to me because I was able to share my knowledge. Now I believe that working together for discussion throughout the semester was incredibly useful. It is worth noting in addition that all the assignments in this course were completed on time.
In this work, I would like to highlight separately the work that our teacher has done to teach my classmates and me such a diverse and complex topic. It was imperative to be patient, because formal and informal logic, deduction and induction, and especially errors, are not immediately absorbed by students. The mentor explained the topics clearly and patiently to us hence that I could understand the material. It needs to say that during the course I had questions, it was natural, but the teacher had the foresight because my difficulties were instantaneously answered while he was lecturing. In addition, I had my doubts when doing my homework, but we were not forbidden to ask friends or even the teacher for help, therefore, individual assignments were not a severe problem.
Now that the RS 204 course has come to an end, I can do a full analytical reflexive work on myself. Without too much modesty, it is worth noting that I have been amazingly productive this semester. This is most probably due to my interest in the subject. This, in turn, led to the fact that both individual and collective tasks were completed on time, and I had no problem with that. In a few months, I have strengthened my views on critical thinking and logical structures, which I will certainly use in my future life. Given all of the above, I believe that an A rating for this course would be justified.