From what I read in this weeks activities, critical thinking is when you triage a
situation before you make a decision and you also have to have proof to support
your decision. Some characteristics of critical thinking that stuck out to me were
being attentive to opportunities to make critical decisions and understanding the
opinions of others. Also, being open minded to different ideas from other. Some
common barriers that people can avoid are being closed minded, resistance to new
ideas and being arrogant. People display these behaviors on a regular basis and I
have found myself doing this and I didn't even realize it fell under critical thinking. I
have had a lot of wait a minute moments when it comes to critical thinking. I really
enjoyed the videos because it made me realize what critical thinking really was.
Critical thinking is digging down deep and using the skills and previous knowledge
that you posses to make a decision on something. When you are critically thinking
on an issue or question you are going to be able think deeply and use a pros and
cons scenario to come up with the correct answer to the questions or situation. Some
characteristics of being a critical thinker are being able to analyze a question or
situation and how you can organize your thoughts to be able to communicate them
effectively to someone. Making rash decisions or speaking or coming to a
conlcusions before really analyzing the situations and covering all the possible
outcomes. I think that the self evaluator was the most interesting thing in the
reading this week was the self evaluating tool, the questions that it asked and the
way I rated them surprised me a little when I really stepped back and thought about
the answer and how I would handle a situation. When I dug deep and evaluated how
I would go about something made me understand and realize how I got there. It
made me realize once I come to a conclusion I have my mind made up and I stick to
it.
