CRITICAL THINKINGCan you imagine an ambitious person lacking the ability to interpret, analyze, evaluate, infer, explain and self-regulate the issues How would this person be ambitious in life without any of those abilities He absolutely would not. I cannot imagine myself being successful in any areas of life with totally lacking these abilities. Critical thinking abilities entail those characteristics and even more than this. It teaches me not the way that what to think, but how to think.
It basically helps me to think clearly, accurately, relevantly, consistently and logically. When I first encountered with this lesson in C121, I did not think that this would be such a broad topic; however, when I have started to dig more and more both in C100 book and internet, I realized that the topic was so broad and in addition to being a broad issue, this would be one of the most important earned skills in my life. I have to admit that the other lessons in C100 are also quite important and learning them will have positive impacts in different areas of life; however, critical thinking will have greater impacts than the others.
Learning and mastering of critical thinking techniques, though, require me to give a lot of efforts and time. However, an unknown author said “ Time given to thought is the greatest time saver of all.” Therefore, I can say that earning those abilities will have great impacts in Sergeants Major Academy, in my military career and civilian education and in quality of life improvement. IMPACTS IN SERGEANTS MAJOR ACADEMYThe short-term impact of critical thinking will show its benefits widely in Sergeants Major Academy, as the curriculum of SMA is so challenging and requiring for SMA students.
Academic writing and reading, preparation of presentation, group-study and class participation are some requirements of the curriculum. With the addition of time constraint, these issues might become indisputably a nightmare for the SMA students. If they lack the ability of learning and implementing critical thinking techniques, the completion of some of the requirements might even become impossible for them. But, as they start learning the critical thinking techniques and start to implement them on the assignments in SMA, they will see how the things get easier to accomplish. What does critical thinking do to simplify the accomplishments of the requirements in SMA then As the critical thinking enhances the abilities of interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation and self-regulation, it enables me to have better understanding of the issues, make effective decisions, determine the credibility of sources easily, be more flexible in considering the alternatives, and be diligent in seeking information in SMA.
All of them will render me to actively participate and make effective decisions without any bias and prejudices in classroom discussions and group-studies. They will also enable me to bolster my comprehension of reading, my ability of writing and preparing presentation. When I consider the volume of information flow in SMA, all techniques of critical thinking will be crucially important for the completion, and those techniques will also equip me to obtain vaster and more critical information for my future and civilian career than I would be able to do without this class. IMPACTS IN MILITARY CAREER AND CIVILIAN EDUCATIONSecond positive impact of critical thinking lesson will concurrently be in my military career and civilian education. Being a senior NCO in Turkish Army requires me to work excessively in many different areas. Those areas vary from dealing with junior NCOs problems to establishing and maintaining logical system of the unit, from being a bridge between commander and NCOs to supporting the commander on unit??™s overall duties.
With the benefits of critical thinking lesson, I will be able to deal with all those issues more effectively and diligently in less time and be better example of my superiors and juniors. Civilian education has always been in my priority list. After the completion of SMA, I will start doing my Masters Degree.
Getting a masters degree, I will need to fulfill many requirements such as reading excessive amount of materials, doing research, writing dissertation. Critical thinking techniques will This lesson will help me to
