Wk2 Project Reflection: Of Worth and Websites

POST 4

What am I doing here?

I have never had a desire to get a Masters degree.  Why the brochure from Full Sail jumped up off my desk last year and declared, “You have to do this,” I do not know.  I certainly didn’t know what it was going to entail.  Like getting married, or having a child, or becoming a teacher, or any of the other worthwhile but demanding life-choices we get to make, I might not have done it if I’d had a clue what I was getting myself into!

This, after all, was not my milieu.  I’m a book and pen and paper girl; I’d finally taught myself to compose on a computer, but I still do all of my reflective writing in a notebook, usually with calligraphy pen. 

So I am proud of me.  A read-and-write Masters would have been much more comfortable for me, and I’d probably still have enjoyed it—and spent a lot less time on it!  But I think I’d have missed the most important thing I’ve learned this year, which is that not just learning new stuff but implementing that knowledge to change the world is the most stimulating, invigorating thing a person can do. 

Now, to be honest, my AR site is largely writing.  One of the things I’m working on now is visual elements—I’ve got some video, and some pictures, but it seems I mostly get in what HAS to be in and then run out of time.  And part of that is because the media elements take me FOREVER!  I wrote most of the amazing (if I say so myself!) script for my AR pitch, “They’re Just Playing Around,” in the half hour between my mammogram and a nail appointment—but it took me over 40 hours to put the video together.

This is frustrating for me—I’m not used to having to struggle to accomplish something academic.  But I feel so cool when I’m done.  And—another extremely valuable experience this year—I really get a taste for the frustration my kids struggle with when I’ve asked them to do the kind of academic stuff that comes easily to me.

Finally, the project itself:  What an amazing experience!  The thrill I felt the day I let the kids take their video notes on their cell phones and discovered that, against all “conventional wisdom” as well as my own expectations, students were MORE focused on their task rather than less—an “Aha!” moment multiplied by all the implications of the discovery.  But I learned as much through what didn’t work as what did; it was my unsuccessful first activity that led me, eventually, to realize the need high school students have to be achieving meaningful work, and how unvalued—useless—they feel when they perceive they are just jumping through hoops.

If you’d told me 12 months ago that within a year I’d have my own website, and have done all the things I’ve done for it, the Skeptical Eyebrow would have nailed you to the wall.  But now I can speak with the credibility of the adventurer who comes back with pictures: the most rewarding place to grow is outside one’s comfort zone.