Experiences of Thinking While Studying at the University

Abstract

This chapter describes experiences of thinking at the university by using examples from two study practices: lecturing and academic writing. Lecturing is approached as a study practice, which, as I explain, entails taking a distance from the instrumental or functionalist understanding of lecturing. Using examples from Gadamer’s writings, I show how thinking in the lecture emerges and how it is experienced by the audience. While trying to avoid any ontological commitments about what thinking is in itself, I describe the experience of university thinking as expanding the subject’s range of experiences not just about the world, but about one’s modes of thinking about the world. Similarly, thinking while being engaged in academic writing is a form of meta-thinking, as it concerns changing one’s ways of thinking about the world. Thus, both lecturing and academic writing foster educational experiences of thinking since these both allow for a transformation of the self and of how we see the world, ultimately an experience of potentiality.