Our own experiences

As I think about my teaching, I have started to go back to my own undergraduate experiences. Sarah and I had the same kinds of passion about learning: it was most exciting when we were able to make connections between the classes we took and within individual classes. When I wrote papers I often would include information or insights from the instructor. For example, I would write, "According to Professor Instructor, the market value of education...." I brought this up to a student I worked with at the reference desk, and he had not thought of doing something like that. I wonder if students think that their research papers exist in some kind of vacuum. When students do discuss these connections, they sometimes feel like their cheating (i.e., I'm using information from this paper in another paper in a different class but similar topics). I'm wondering what made you passionate about learning. Was it the connections or something else.