New semester, same challenges. Now that I know better, how am I doing better? It's time for Super project 2.0
Getting back to First Principles
In a conversation with my group for EDUC 6115 Research Methods for Education, my buddy Amy was talking about her tiny humans and how to them, everything is research. That led to a conversation about the contradictions we each felt about being part of a system that snuffs out the love of learning and experimentation for far too many kids.
In fact, we shared that we were all found ourselves longing for more "time in the sandbox" in our own experiences in this Master's program. It too often feels like there's not enough time to play around with new ideas so that you really get to learn them. It also felt pretty telling that, especially for our group interview project - which was the only thing any of us really got to do collaboratively all semester, we were having SO much fun that none of us wanted to stop working on it and start assignment 4.
You may be wondering what kind of nerds want to keep doing research together after they've already finished their project (and then some)?
THESE NERDS:
I think this also speaks so strongly to the power of real connection in creating prime conditions for transformational learning. However, cultivating that connection took a lot of time, trust and openness.
That made me think... maybe it's not just me with my difficulties with communication, processing speed & working memory that make online learning so difficult. I may constantly feel behind because of my particular issues, but it does seem that generally, online classes are not set up to allow students to really get to know one another, or to engage with content in truly participatory or innovative ways. This means that as I plan my final projects, I need to go back to first principles - the few things I know to be absolutely true. These become the logical building blocks from which I can create.
For me, what remained true this semester was that my best learning happened with others, there was too much new content too quickly for me to process, trauma intervened, and I will always struggle to separate my thinking into different pieces of work for separate courses/assignments that often don't feel separate to me at all. It's a weird thing to try to explain:
*This is a clip that made up part of the proposal I wrote to my 3 professors around this point in the fall semester, to take all of the work I still had to finish and attempt to do it in a way that felt better/more authentic to me.
What came from what I called my "super project" from semester 1 was my website in its first "complete" iteration (pretty much as-is now, with the exception of this blog), and this attempt at explaining all the reasons why I needed to try and do my work in a more holistic way. That was my best understanding at the time; I am excited to take all I have learned since then and play around with how to weave it all into the next iteration of this work.
So, there's my proposal. Let's chat about it! ;)
References
Clear, J. (2017, November 13). First Principles: Elon Musk on the Power of Thinking for Yourself. Jamesclear.com. https://jamesclear.com/first-principles
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