I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been taking classes at Lewis & Clark and all my classes that semester seem to intersect. For instance, last semester, I was taking philosophy of ethics, Race & Ethnicity on a Global Perspective and Power & Resistance and thesis prep. Granted all the classes were chosen by me in order to complete my environmental studies major but they all seemed to connect in some way or another. I would be in class talking about one thing and I always found myself talking about something else I was reading in another class that was very pertinent to my other classes.
Isn’t it weird when you have never heard of something but then you are seeing/hearing about it all the time? I feel like I’ve had a lot of those moments at Lewis & Clark. Even now when I am taking animal drawing, a class I never thought I would be able to connect to my other academic class, but I am. There’s actually a word for what I’ve been experiencing it’s called Baader-Meinhof. “The reason for this is our brains’ prejudice towards patterns. Our brains are fantastic pattern recognition engines, a characteristic which is highly useful for learning, but it does cause the brain to lend excessive importance to unremarkable events.”
So it isn’t just a creepy coincident that I am constantly hearing about something I just learned. My brain likes patterns and is seeking out ways to keep the pattern going. It is kind of like a study technique that you aren’t even aware of. When I am hearing a new concept in multiple classes and making connections to my other classes it’s basically my brain processing the things I’m learning. So intersections between my classes aren’t just a creepy coincidence. My brain patterns seem like a beautiful coincidence but they are actually just as planned out as a synchronized swimming routine.