Curious, Nervous and Confused
I don't remember much about the first day of school, but I know the first few weeks were really chaotic. There was so much work, and not to mention this new "open source learning" thing that none of us had heard of before or experienced. And now we're all expected to adapt to it? Yeah, okay.
But it happened. I now understand what this course is meant to show us. First of all, we were each made to have blogs and post regularly on them, and--get this--we could post whatever we wanted. Whatever I wanted. As students, we are nearly never given the freedom to do something like that for school, at least not until college. I feel that no one abused this freedom, but wholly took advantage of it when given the opportunity.
One thing that was different from this course as opposed to other courses was the (somewhat) lack of literature. Whether that is good or bad is open to anyone's interpretation; it was an adjustment for me, still struggling with the concept of how to use a blog. My favorite book this year would have to be Great Expectations. While it didn't necessarily have a cookie-cutter happy ending, I felt satisfied with the resolution. Pip had overcome obstacles and was comfortable with himself and his decisions at the end of it all, which is basically how I feel about the course now. Brave New World, while I strongly disliked it, made some good points that can't be ignored. I believe that what Huxley did was over-exaggerate some of society's characteristics in order to create an unpleasant future image. While this book may not have helped me develop through this course, it has allowed me to see what the future could be and motivated me to stop that from happening. When we had to write about an essay about Beowulf , I chose to write mine from a feminist point of view. It forced me to see Beowulf in a different light and, as a result, I could not say that he was a hero. This has made me more open minded because no matter what one believes, there is always another side.
For the longest time, I would tell people that English was my favorite subject. But the more I've thought about it, the only things I'm good at are grammar and creative writing. The more I thought about how I hated writing essays about books, the more I realized that English had never been my favorite subject. It was history. I've always loved history, and always just thought I loved English. When it came time to think about a Masterpiece topic, I struggled, but then decided to do it based on something that I loved and was passionate about. I missed having to take a history class this year, and being able to go to a super cool museum for English made up for it. While I would love to be a museum curator, I'm just not sure if it's the career path for me, and I don't know where I'll go from here, but it definitely remains an interest.
I wouldn't say that there was something about the course that made me laugh out loud, but sitting next to Anaya generated some pretty good laughs, and I'll remember that.
Every presentation was unique and engaging in its own way. One thing that stood out to me was the level of passion that everyone had. We all chose something that we loved because it made us feel a certain way, or because we'd been working on it for a long time. Some people's Masterpieces started a few years ago, and they didn't even know it then. Everyone did a great job of communicating why they felt their topic is important and meaningful, and they all are.
Did I complete the hero's journey? I guess. I mean, I completed the course, and I feel like I got a lot out of it I responded to the "call of adventure", but not so much that I was completely out of my comfort zone, as far as using technology and my blog. I'm happy that I took this course because it was a really different experience. I do feel like I've learned more about myself and grown, and I'm looking forward to bigger and better things.
