In all honesty, I have never enjoyed learning in a traditional school setting. Waking up five days a week at 6 A.M. in order to drive to my school 15 miles away and coming home at 3:30 P.M. seemed more like a daunting task than something I should be grateful for. Learning always came easy to me, easy enough that I was able to learn Algebra without the help of anyone besides myself, so when I became ill and was forced to stay at home for days at a time, I was not worried.
Open Source Learning provided me with a new experience this year. All the course work was posted online so it wasn’t difficult to stay caught up on work during those times where I missed school due to my health. I enjoyed walking into the classroom on those days I attended school because I knew I would surrounded by my peers who had the same goals as I did, and that everyday there would be the guarantee of some sort of intellectual discussion. We were given the responsibility of taking charge of our own learning, something most people wouldn’t believe that teenagers at the age of 17 or 18 were mature enough to do. We were AP students, the cream of the crop, the ones most serious about our learning, of course we were ready for this. Contrary to most people’s beliefs, we didn’t need anyone to hold our hands for us and no one did. This course gave us the chance to mold our learning to whatever style worked the best for us, it gave us opportunities to prove that we could handle the responsibility of handling our learning and I’d like to think that we did a pretty damn good job at it.
In a regular English class we would read classic works of literature, work on improving our vocabulary and memorize which literary techniques were which, all of which we did do amongst other things as well. I was not expecting for an English class to ignite my passion for art, a passion that had died down over the years. The comics I created for this class were a combination of both art and literature and were not something I had ever considered doing before taking this course. I am a firm believer of doing what you love, this course reminded me that I loved art and that I shouldn’t see it as a task I have to do but something I can do for fun, and I intend to continue having fun with it for the rest of my life.
Speaking of fun, I had more fun in this class than I would have thought I would. Sure there were moments in which I had the strong desire to curse up a storm, but the good outweigh the bad. I remember the times when my friends and I replaced words in the titles of famous books with Mr. Hutton’s name, or when Jake did this old man voice during the reading of Macbeth, and how you could hear Rachel swearing in the background of Miki’s masterpiece video which caused the entire class to burst out with laughter.
Yes, we laughed together, but we also supported one another. Many of the masterpiece projects this year dealt with finding something you loved but also dealing with the events that lead you there. Maira and Uriel spoke about the difficulties they had to face in life, Maira’s experience with her absent father which inspired her to work in child protection services and Uri, who had trouble with seeing purpose in the world, made it his mission to invoke happiness in those around him. Zach, Haley, and Machaila all coincidentally chose to talk about physical therapy and how important it was for athletes to take their injuries seriously after suffering some injuries of their own, in Haley’s case a career ending one. Allyson talked about her trip to the University of Michigan and participating in a genetics program there which piqued her interests. All were very different topics, but all were about how certain events lead them to think about their futures and how their pasts brought them to their decisions.
As for me, I don’t believe I answered the “call of adventure” like many of my classmates. I didn’t live a hero’s journey and that’s probably because I do not consider myself to be one. I lived day by day hoping for something to happen, but never really went out to search for something and before I knew it my senior year was over.
I regret not being like John in Brave New World, who’s curiosity lead him to want to explore the world he didn’t know and to try new things he’s never done. I envy Hamlet’s determination to reach his goal even if it means he will lose everything in the end. And I long to have faith in something as much as Siddhartha did in his quest for enlightenment. I have no great curiosity, strong determination, or faith, but they are qualities I hope to someday have. With the inspiration I received from the novels I read in this course I hope to better myself as a person. So that one day I won’t see waking up at 6 A.M. as a daunting task and as a chance for a hero’s journey of my own instead.
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