Christine Carlson

April 1, 1998

A Real Learning Experience

I was 13 years old and alone in the house. I had before me a collage of ingredients I had asked my mother to buy. I peered down at my recipe. The first instruction was to, "combine butter and sugars; cream until fluffy and light." "Cream," what did that mean? I wasn't sure, but I knew that the two sticks of butter fresh from the refrigerator in front of me did not resemble a creamy state. I wasn't sure how to proceed, but I knew that cream is a liquid. Therefore, I concluded that these instructions must mean to melt the two sticks of butter into liquid. I melted the butter in the microwave, and I added the sugars.

I stirred, and I stirred. My batter looked like brown soup. I didn't remember my mom's being that runny, but I reasoned that by adding the other ingredients it would become the right consistency. I carefully added the flour, salt, baking soda and cinnamon. I stirred some more. The batter was getting a little thicker, but it was still quite runny. Finally, I added the eggs and the oatmeal and stirred some more. I wasn't sure what I had done wrong, but this mixture looked nothing like my mother's. I tried to put the batter onto cookie sheets, but the batter was so runny that it slid everywhere.

The more I tried, the more frustrated I got. My mother and sister returned home just as I was about to give up. I immediately asked my mother how I could salvage my cookies. She looked at the mess I had made in the kitchen, and then at my pathetic batter. "What did you do?" she asked. "I did just what the recipe said," I replied. My mother then began to ask me different questions, making sure I had included all of the correct ingredients. When she had determined everything had been added, she asked, "How long did you cream the butter?" I replied, "After I melted it, I stirred the sugar in for a really long time." My mother replied, "You melted it? You did not follow directions. The recipe did not say to melt the butter, it said to cream it. You cannot cream butter if it is melted; your cookies are ruined."

I was panicked, "Isn't there anything I can do to fix them?" My mother answered, "No, you need to start over." I couldn't believe what she was saying; I must be hearing her wrong. All that hard work down the drain. "I don't have enough ingredients to start over," I exclaimed. "Well, that's too bad. Clean up your mess so I can start dinner." That was it. I felt like crying. To make matters worse, my sister was in the background laughing her head off. She thought my failed attempt was hilarious.

It took me over an hour to clean up the kitchen, and as I cleaned I kept thinking in my head how stupid I was. Everyone could make cookies. I had seen my mom do it a million times, and I had screwed everything up. My mom was right, I couldn't follow directions. If I couldn't even make something as easy as cookies, I was doomed to be a horrible cook my entire life. I did not attempt to bake cookies again until I was 20 years old.

Despite the fact this learning experience happened over seven years ago, I remember it like it was yesterday. Because this event is so memorable for me, I decided to try and uncover what this situation reveals about how I learn.

Before this incident, I had never considered that I could not follow directions. I did well in school, and I attempted new things with confidence. Cooking was no exception. Until this failure, I had never even considered the possibility that I would not be able to cook successfully. After this failure I began to change my perception about cooking. Or, as William Glasser would say, I took the picture of cooking as a need-satisfying activity out of my head (Glasser, 1986). According to Glasser, people are motivated to do things based on the pictures they have stored in their mental photo albums. The pictures in our photo albums are activities that are associated with pleasant memories (Glasser, 1986). My cookie experience was a very unpleasant memory, so this experience caused me to remove the picture of cooking as a pleasant activity out of my mental photo album. Because the need-satisfying picture of cooking was out of my mental photo album, I did not attempt to cook again for several years.

In addition to the pictures inside a person's head, Glasser also believes that there are five needs that influence how people live their lives. These five needs are the need to survive and reproduce, the need to belong and love, the need to gain power, the need to be free, and the need to have fun (Glasser, 1986). I quit trying to bake after my cookie failure because cooking did not satisfy many of my needs. For example, my need to belong and feel loved was not met because I felt rejected by my mother's criticism and my sister's ridicule. I did not feel power because there was nothing I could do to salvage my cookie dough. I also did not have fun because I do not enjoy failure, ridicule, and criticism.

Why did I react so dramatically to one simple mistake? My mother never raised her voice or scolded me during her evaluation of my batter, but I felt rejected. My feelings were hurt. I felt like my mother's critique was criticizing me, not my batter. I felt like I had failed in her eyes. The reason I can remember my feelings related to an incident that happened almost ten years ago is because feelings are important to me. The reason I know my feelings are so important is that I took a personality test called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The test's results are divided into four categories. One of the categories deals with how a person makes decisions. In general, when making decisions, a person tends to either be a thinker or a feeler. Thinkers base their decisions on logic and on objective analysis of cause and effect. On the other hand, feelers base their decisions on values and person-centered concerns. My personal Myers-Briggs score (0% thinking, 100% feeling) confirmed that I tend to base my decisions on values and feelings. Pleasing my parents is something I value greatly, and I felt like I had let my mother down by my disastrous cooking attempt. Because feelings are very important to me, I also make my decisions based on person-centered concerns. Thus, to avoid embarrassing my mother and myself again, I never tried to cook another thing while I lived at home.

Though my mother was specific to the cookie incident with her criticism, I extended her same criticism to all the future recipes I would ever try. If anyone asked me if I could cook, I would say no. I thought the fact that I failed with this cookie recipe meant that I would fail every recipe I tried. The idea that I could not follow a recipe correctly became one of my personal myths. I filtered every aspect of trying to cook from that day forward though this myth (Harri-Augstein & Thomas, 1991). In other words, because I believed I could not follow directions correctly, that belief influenced all of my future cooking attempts. Personal myths can greatly affect a learner, and the book Learning Conversations even suggests that personal myths are the single most important determinant in what a person can or cannot learn (Harri-Augstein & Thomas, 1991). Thus, whether a learner thinks she can or cannot learn something helps to determine what she actually will or will not learn. The power of my myth was so intense that I abandoned cooking all together for seven years.

A Kick in the Seat of the Pants by Roger von Oech explains that the process of learning can be broken down into four different steps, or roles (von Oech, 1986). Von Oech assigns identities to these four roles when he names them the explorer, artist, judge, and warrior. The explorer is the role used when searching for information. The artist is the role used to transform information into new ideas. The judge is the role used to evaluate an idea, and the warrior carries an idea into action (von Oech, 1986). How I learn is influenced by these four different roles. Reading A Kick in the Seat of the Pants made me realize that the weakest of my four roles are my explorer and my warrior (von Oech, 1986). Having a weak explorer and warrior contributed to my cookie disaster. The main problem I encountered during the recipe was that I didn't understand what the term "cream" meant. What did I do to solve this problem? I got frustrated, and then I took what I already knew about cream and used this limited knowledge to take a guess at what the term meant in the context of my recipe.

Unlike a good explorer, I overlooked the obvious when trying to determine what "cream" meant (von Oech, 1986). For example, my grandmother, who is an excellent cook, was just a phone call away. I am sure she could have easily explained what "cream" meant. Also, my mother has over twenty cookbooks. Several of them have glossaries that would have defined "cream." I could have even looked the word up in the dictionary to get an idea of what "cream" could mean in the context of my recipe. However, my underdeveloped explorer did not consider these options (von Oech, 1986).

In addition to not being a very good explorer when it came to unknown cooking terms, I was also not a very good warrior when it came to responding to my cooking "defeat." Contrary to von Oech's advice, I did not get up when I was knocked down or learn from my defeats (von Oech, 1986). Instead of looking at my first solo cooking attempt as a valuable learning tool (I would always remember that "cream" did not mean melt) I chose to view it as a complete failure and reason to give up. I did not have a lion in my heart reminding me that the consequences of this failure were very minimal when viewed in the big picture (von Oech, 1986).

My cookie failure story does have a happy ending. When I came to college, my roommate and best friend was a wonderful cook. She was always baking something, and one day she asked me why I never baked anything. I told her about my awful cookie experience, and she listened. She said it was nothing to be ashamed of, and that trying any recipe for the first time was a challenge. She said I should try again and she would be willing to help me. She learned from her mom how to cook, and I would learn from her. With her help, I tried another cookie recipe. My cookies were delicious.

My conversation with my roommate made me re-think my cookie failure experience. The conversation allowed me to view the past experience from a new perspective. In fact, our conversation created a significant change in how I constructed my personal meaning (Harri-Augstein & Thomas, 1991). In other words, through our conversation, I began to realize that my cookie failure was not a reason to quit cooking forever. Our conversation had given me a chance to reflect on my failure with someone else. My roommate made me realize that it is not uncommon to have a recipe mishap. First recipes are a challenge for everyone, and one failure did not mean that I would never be able to bake again. She admitted that she needed help (her mother) to become a good cook, and she offered me the help I would need to become a good cook.

I have been cooking for about two years now, but every time I try a new recipe I am influenced by my initial cookie failure. In fact, my past experience has become one of my greatest resources (Harri-Augstein & Thomas, 1991). For example, because of my cookie failure, I always carefully look over any new recipe. Are there terms I don't understand? If so, I look them up, or ask my roommate's advice. I also never try a new recipe if I am having company. I learned from my cookie failure that first attempts are not always successful, and that experience is an excellent teacher. Therefore, I don't make a recipe for guests unless I have had the experience of making it successfully before.

I have experienced the power of reflection as a learner. When I conversed with my roommate about my cookie failure, it was an eye-opening experience. Our conversation was the first time in several years I had consciously reflected on my cookie attempt. The learning conversation I had with my roommate and several successful baking attempts have helped me to gradually change my personal myth (Harri-Augstein & Thomas, 1991). I once again have a picture in my head of cooking as a need-fulfilling activity (Glasser, 1996). In fact, I recently received Cardinal Key's "Betty Crocker Award" because of my outstanding cooking abilities!

Re-examining my cookie failure has made me more aware of what influences my learning and the power of taking time to reflect. When I describe how I learn, I cannot take just one thing into account because many things influence how I learn what I learn. This paper has given me a chance to examine how I learn, and I hope to use this knowledge in the future to improve my own learning. With these benefits in mind, I hope to allow my future students several opportunities to reflect on their own learning.

References

Glasser, W. (1986). Control Theory in the Classroom. New York: Harper & Row.

Harri-Augstein, S. & Thomas, L. (1991). Learning Conversations. London: Routledge.

Von Oech, R. (1986). A Kick in the Seat of the Pants. New York: Harper & Row.