Student Interview with Lawrence

February 2014 - Lawrence Mclingberg

Lawrence is a sophomore in Terry Weseloh's GEW 101 course this semester. He says that GEW has improved his critical thinking skills and feels it is a "gen ed class that really is helpful for other courses" and teaches him things he needs to know to do well in those. Although he doesn't mind the writing, he says he enjoys reading more than writing and noted several of the articles Professor Weseloh has assigned, including his favorite so far, "The Culture of Thin Bites Fiji," a look at how Fijians view body type as opposed to how Americans do. He was impressed by Professor Weseloh's use of a wide variety of texts to teach critical thinking, including articles, novels, and even advertisements. In addition to GEW, Lawrence is also enrolled in another writing course, History 301, which specifically shows history majors how to write large research papers in that discipline. He said the critical thinking skills he has learned in GEW have been put to good use in his history course.