Monday, June 8, 2015

Masterpiece Bildungsroman

Open source learning has definitely changed the way I view education and how I think education can be most useful. It comes with an endowment of trust given to my colleagues and me. Did we earn that trust? Well, that had yet to be seen, as the only thing we had done prior to the endowment was enroll ourselves in the class.
                Many of the fictitious characters we studied over the course of the year had qualities that some of us could find relatable. Hamlet, for instance, faced making an incredible decision when he learns the truth of Claudius and his mother. His reaction to facing this hard decision is almost like looking in a mirror; reminding us of all the thinking we need to do and all the questions we need to answer about ourselves. Where do you want to go to college? What do you want to do the rest of your life? How are you going to afford this kind of education? Hamlet is a classic example of a man needing to find himself. Another character from a classic piece of literature that I can see a piece of myself in is Holden Caulfield, from J. D. Salinger’s book, Catcher in the Rye. Holden strives to be different from everyone else, and can’t seem to be understood by the people around him. The only people who have a chance at knowing him are those who somehow manage to get extremely close, namely, his sister Phoebe.
                Growing up, I’ve always spent a lot of time on the internet, watching my favorite Youtubers every day after school until I went to bed. I aspired to them, and always kind of wanted to become a famous internet personality myself, however, I was always very aware how impractical the idea ever was. Good equipment is expensive, and it’s beyond competitive. That being said, I still wanted to try it out. This class, because of Open Source Learning, gave me the opportunity to do just that. My friends and I had the resources to create videos and really get to feel what it’s like to do it for a living, on a small scale, of course. It was harder than any of us had imagined, but we were all satisfied with the outcome, one of the videos in particular. It was a combination of our best ideas which we put forward and presented to the class, getting exactly the response we had hoped for. It really was fun and exciting to see the final product after so much time working on it. That project was easily the highlight of this English class and would not have been possible without Dr. Preston or his idea of Open Source Learning.
                Sometimes, when learning about literature, we come across things that in any other context would probably be considered taboo. These types of things are usually met with a bit of an awkward lesson, or a small lecture on a sensitive subject.  In some instances, however, these kinds of lessons are met with someone who doesn’t quite remember common social etiquette, or temporarily loses their filter on what to say, and what not to say in a group of people. In other words, sometimes you’re in a class with Omar Dominguez. I’ll never forget reading Huxley’s Brave New World in class and slowing down to make sure everyone has an understanding of “orgy porgy” and why it’s a part of the society in the book. While Dr. Preston lightly explains what’s going on, avoiding words or phrases that would seem too inappropriate, Omar’s genius interpretation (and his follow-up remark of that interpretation) went something like, “Oh, he was masturbating!”
                All of the good masterpiece presentations have one awesome thing in common: they are all perfect representations of peoples’ passions and values. Alec had a great presentation to educate people in the use of psychedelics, Omar created a masterpiece of a song, and Chase took a look into the minds of some passionate individuals, showing us where they find this incredible feeling they call "stoke”. In a way, this course turned a lot of the students into heroes. We were all called upon to an adventure of some sort. We all ventured into something new, something unknown. We met mentors, we struggled, and we even almost failed. In the end, we all had something great to show for it. I came out of it with brand new experiences that I wouldn’t ever gain in any other way.

                Ultimately, I’m glad I get to end my time in high school with the classes and people I got to. I’ve had some of the best teachers I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting just this year. This class gave me the opportunity to do more than learn about literature, in that it gave me the opportunity to form new relationships with the people around me and, even more importantly, learn about myself. All of us, over the course of the year, earned the trust given to us by Dr. Preston and honored it to the end.