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Mental Models Ogl 220

In a high school science class, the author participated in a Socratic seminar about gender roles where most of the male students believed women should not have careers and should stay home to raise children. This challenged the author's view that women should have career options. The author believes that in future disagreements, they should ask others to explain their perspective to build empathy and understanding rather than resentment. The author stopped practicing Catholicism after their church opposed gay marriage, upsetting family and friends but following their own beliefs. In a high school cooking class, the author assumed they were a bad cook after consistently losing competitions, despite enjoying cooking. They now regret not asking for more feedback to improve rather than giving

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71 views3 pages

Mental Models Ogl 220

In a high school science class, the author participated in a Socratic seminar about gender roles where most of the male students believed women should not have careers and should stay home to raise children. This challenged the author's view that women should have career options. The author believes that in future disagreements, they should ask others to explain their perspective to build empathy and understanding rather than resentment. The author stopped practicing Catholicism after their church opposed gay marriage, upsetting family and friends but following their own beliefs. In a high school cooking class, the author assumed they were a bad cook after consistently losing competitions, despite enjoying cooking. They now regret not asking for more feedback to improve rather than giving

Uploaded by

api-617659032
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Prompt 1:

A time when I had been presented with someone’s mental model was when I was in
science class while we were having a Socratic seminar. We had been talking about
women and men’s gender roles in society and it was only me and one other girl in a
room filled with around 20 boys. One boy had brought up that women should not have
jobs that are hard and should stay home or work part-time to have children and take
care of them. I had not grown up to believe that women should just stay home and take
care of children so this made me personally very upset. I remember calling him sexist
and that he had toxic masculinity. The other women in this group had agreed with me,
but there were also many boys who believed the same ideas about women that the first
boy did. We were called sensitive and radical to believe that men could stay home and
take care of men or that people could just have the option to not have children. This was
concerning to me since this was only about three years ago but I felt their opinion to be
old fashioned. This was a mental model of mine that women should have the option to
stay home or go to work, or not have children. I had grown up in a different perspective
than most of them since I was a girl who had a single mother who did it all. I do not
know if just fighting really changed anyone’s minds because I think it takes more time
than that but it was a time that my mental model was challenged.

Prompt 2:

I think that the next time that I am offended or frustrated by someone’s comments I can
ask them about how they see it from their perspective. I can ask them how this makes
them feel and why. I can ask them to explain more of their thinking to me. I would like to
ask these kinds of questions because it allows me to see the situation from their
perspective and give me a different way to see the same situation, just from someone
else’s eyes. I think it helps build empathy for that person and the situation. I would like
to say that I am open to new ideas a lot but I need solid reasoning that makes sense for
me. I think that when the other person is upset as me I can tell them my way of seeing
it. How my past experiences affect how I see the situation, explain to them how it
makes me feel. I would hope that this would allow me and the other people to have at
least respect for each other about our choices instead of resentment. This hopefully
allows for change and not just consistent unrest and no peace.
Prompt 3:
Some views that I have had in my tower of beliefs include religion. When I was growing
up I was in a very catholic household. Every Sunday it was church and we would pray
every day. When I would go to my great grandma’s house we would do the Rosary every
night. I grew up okay with this but, the older I got the more I was upset about the church
that I grew up in. It was when my church was praying for the supreme court to not pass
gay marriage that I stood up and left. This made a lot of people upset, but it changed my
mind very fast about how I felt about this religion. I grew up thinking that this was the
only religion that I could practice and it caused a lot of fighting for me to stop going to
church and practicing with my family. My grandfather said that he would not talk to me
ever again until I get confirmed in the church and I never did. To me, that was a really
hard choice. I lost family in this choice and friends which should have been mine. I wish
that the people who I lost in my life were able to put aside my beliefs to accept who I am
without a religion.
I have had different belief systems than a lot of people and I think that the most
important thing is to remember that when you are upset to have empathy and
encompass the whole person. Everyone will not agree with everything you say or do.
This is apparent in my hometown now. I live in Kenosha, Wisconsin where there were
recently riots and protests for Black Lives Matter. Ever since this happened there has
been so much fighting. I think in these situations it is hard because feelings and beliefs
are so involved yet a person should have the ability to listen and hear someone out.

Prompt 4:
While I was in high school I took a lot of culinary courses, eventually leading me to a
professional class that gave me the experience to compete. I really enjoyed my class
and I loved cooking, I was hoping to turn it into a career after school. However,
whenever I completed my teacher was always upset because I never won. He was so
excited when a lot of my peers won and even cheered them up if they lost but he always
was expecting more out of me. I took the data of me consistently losing, and my
teacher’s feedback then to create meaning. I was bad at cooking. I made assumptions
that in my head I was good at cooking because I liked my food. I thought that my friends
and family had been lying to me every time they ate my food. I drew conclusions that I
should not longer cook and compete in competitions. I adopted the belief that I was bad
at cooking. I then took action and I stopped cooking and competing. The results I got
were no feedback from my teacher and judges and I no longer cooked for family and
friends. This was hard for me because it was something that I loved that was taken
away from me because I had believed everyone else. I wish that I had continued trying
and instead I got scared. I should have taken the nervousness that I felt and channeled
it into fuel for my body to handle the challenge. The stress should have created a drive
inside of me.

Prompt 5:

I think that the guideline that was most relevant to that situation would be to “ask others
to explain the steps in their thinking.” If I had taken the time to learn how my teacher felt
about winning and understand why he felt that my cooking was not good because I did
not win, I might be more confident and better at cooking. I should have asked him and
the judges more questions to keep improving. When I would see my teacher give more
support to the other people in my class I should have asked for help as well. I could
have asked my peers for feedback on my competition style and asked them to explain
their thinking to me as well so I could amend my style a bit. I think that this would have
helped me be better at competitions and cooking. It would have allowed me to see if the
teacher had a bias or if he genuinely did not think I was good enough to be in the class. I
think that now I would have been more proactive in the way that I handled the situation
and that I would have won a couple of competitions. I put myself down way too much
because of the experience that I had. I am content now knowing that I do make good
food and that food is so subjective because everyone has different ideas about their
perfect food. Maybe my idea of good steak was rare and my teachers were well done
yet he did not explain his thinking to me, and I did not ask.

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