Week Three: The Whole

If you are lucky the group that you have just begun coursework will remain with you throughout your program.  In academia they call this a “cohort”.  According to Wikipedia just for support sake a cohort is “a cohort is a group of subjects who have shared a particular time together during a particular time span” (“Cohort”, 2011)*.  The first cohorts were all a part of the Roman military, as it was their way of dividing up the soldiers into smaller groups that could be easily identified.  This format also allowed for the small cohort groups to get very close to each other further assisting them in battle (“Cohort”, 2011).  While you are likely not headed into battle, this your cohort is likely to signify the beginning of a long journey with a few people who have a lot in common with you.  If you were to ask me, I think this is a great idea.  What better way to encourage students to learn from each other and their accumulated knowledge than to put them in a scenario to get to know each other very well.  There is a quote by Aristotle, pulled from his writings in metaphysics that goes like this, “the whole is more than the sum of its parts” (“The Complete Works”, 1984).  I am with Aristotle on this one, if you work with your cohort, the group of you will each become greater by being willing to learn from each other.

*Authors note: There is some debate over the merit of using Wikipedia as a document source.  Given the relative informality of this blog I chose to use it, but be sure to consult prior to using it in more academic writing.

Tactics:

• Continue to write a little bit each day.  Even if you are just writing pieces of papers that will come in handy later.  It is not uncommon to have ideas that relate to writings at random times.  For this I use GoogleDocs as a way to have a continuous document to record thoughts that relate to papers.  As a matter of fact this is being written right now in a GoogleDoc.
• Also consider starting to back up course materials on something additional too a jump drive or external hard drive.  This will give you a higher likelihood that materials will not be lost in a technology tragedy.  I use Dropbox, (available at www.dropbox.com) a free software online but feel free to check out other versions.

Tips so good that I cannot take credit for them.

• Divide and conquer.  If your cohort group is faced with a large amount of reading to keep track of considering dividing up the materials amongst the group evenly so that members of the group can outline materials and share them.  This way as each person surveys the reading material they will have a strong outline reference to refer back to later.  This will also help with comps and justifying why materials were assigned to begin with.
• Save all drafts of your writing, you never know when you might suddenly feel that what you wrote previously is better than the version you are working on now.

Quote that best represents the week.

• “The whole is more than the sum of the parts.” - Aristotle (“The Complete Works”, 1984)

Remember that what lies ahead might be a challenge but it is worth every minute.

Resources:

Cohort. (n.d). In Wikipedia. Retrieved, September 9, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohort.

The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. 2 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1984