Prom Intensifies

I know everyone's talking about prom, but whatever. It's my first prom. I'm allowed to be cliché. I've made at least three shopping trips, had a three-hour appointment to get my hair dyed, and made arrangements to pick up friends and maybe even have a nice dinner before we arrive. It's going to be two hours of exhilerating fun- I haven't been to a dance since middle school, after all, and who knows what you're actually supposed to do when you go to those things? Does anyone actually dance? I sure don't know. I'll probably spend a lot of time standing around holding a cup of ambiguously flavored punch, but at least there'll be people I know and like to talk to, likely just as awkward as me.

But I'm not going to my school prom.

I'm going to the LGBT+ prom that Time Out Youth organizes every year, this year housed at the Van Landingham Estate. I feel infinitely more comfortable going there, as it has a much less strict dress code, allowing me to wear something that's not a ridiculously expensive dress, and as an added perk tickets are over fourteen times less costly than the school's prom tickets at $5 ($10 at the door). There's going to be food, friends, and as many flamboyantly dressed people as I can handle. 

I'd say it's going to be a good night. 

World of 7 Billion

I am very tired.

I think, at this point, most students are very tired. It's been a strange winter, and everyone says junior year is the hardest, but no matter what year you're in, it's always going to exhaust you. Even if you genuinely love learning, even if you have a passion for your subjects, the whole school institution stretches people, students and teachers, thinner than they have any need to be. The short timeline of the latest project- about a week- has been stressful, on top of all the other stresses. It's better that I worked alone- communication, quickly and comprehensively, is always difficult- but I'm still not quite satisfied with my product. 

If I had more time, I might be able to summon more to put into the video. I know that's what everyone says, that if there was only more time, if only, if only, if only, things would be better. The hope is that, in the future, there will be more time. I know that some regard it as an expression of indecisiveness or laziness, but that's not been my experience. Truly desparate people, struggling with difficult, human things, wish for more time. 

Well, now it's done. Now, on to the next thing, and the next, and the next. We'll see what happens. We can't know now. Isn't that always how it goes?

On Vulnerability

We've been talking a lot this week about how we represent ourselves on social media, on how colleges will see us and how the rest of the world thinks of us through that.

My first instinct is to say that I'm not ashamed of anything that I've put out under my name. And I'm not. I feel like I've even been a lot more true to myself than a lot of people are, and though that's messy, isn't everyone? Should it matter what a college thinks if they see a few of the most personal things I've said, even if they find them, because I've been careful and don't put my last name on a lot of it?

I don't think so. I try to be kind to others. I have friends, I write, I participate in Girl Scouts and raise money for church and buy lollipops from the French club. I also have had a lot of minor breakdowns, venting through social media, and while I'm not comfortable with a stranger seeing that kind of thing I'll not hide that I did it.

I don't really know what to think. I know that I believe my personal blog should be a safe place for me to talk about how I feel. 

But I don't know how it'll affect my future, if at all. I don't know what to think when our teachers say that you need to be more careful, show only the good parts of yourself. Where's the truth in that? Where's the sincerity? If you lie about the worst parts of yourself, how are people supposed to know what you're really like in "real life"?

I don't know how to justify hiding things like that. I think that I'll continue trying to be as real as possible with whoever reads this, and I think that if I stop telling the truth someday that I'll have lost sight of who I am.

The Beginner's Guide

I just finished watching a Let's Play of a game that has had a profound impact on me. It's called The Beginner's Guide, and I see a lot of myself in it. I think that a lot of people could see themselves in it, but it really spoke to a lot of places in me that are dark and terrible and not nice to look at, but it spoke about them and to them and I think that anyone, anyone at all, who watched it would be moved.

So, please, sit down for the two hours that it is and watch. Let yourself watch, be engrossed in the story, allow yourself to feel what the narrator and the subject are feeling. And if you can't, that's fine. I don't think that we are meant to feel everything that someone else feels, because if we did, then I think we wouldn't be ourselves. And it's important to be ourselves.

This isn't really relevant to the project. This isn't really relevant to anything but the humanity in me, and that moves me to want or to need, even, to share it.

http://youtu.be/OPP9pdApRQE

I don't really care if you don't like the man who plays it. Perhaps you want to play it for yourself. But I think that watching allows you a connection, and that is so, so valuable, especially in the context of the game.

Do, or don't. But I think that this is important. To help, at least, with understanding.

A New Perspective on Failure

This week has been...difficult. I've been struggling with getting a handle on my mental health, and though I'm making baby steps towards getting better, my grades, my work ethic, and my mood are taking a serious dive. 

But in DigCit, we've been talking about having a sort of 'growth mindset' and the idea that if you fail, it's okay, you can try again. We discussed how that manifests itself, and we especially talked about how our education system- and a lot of the environment at our school- doesn't encourage the 'growth mindset'. I find myself too often these days in a more fixed sort of mindset. I don't know how to change that. I know that it's through a lot of factors that I believe it- but I know there needs to be a change, or kids who are still going through middle school will have these poisonous ideas as well.

It's partly me and my perfectionism. It's partly teachers who belittle and condescend to percieved 'less intelligent' students. It's partly America's standardized testing, that enforces the idea that you must have this one skill- test-taking- or you won't get anywhere in life.

I'm just a student, albeit one who has that test-taking skill. I don't know how to change our education system for the better. I look at other countries and see students at least happier, if going through no less challenging work than I am. 

I want to make a change. But my fixed mindset- the insidious idea that I am one among millions and billions, such a small part of the machine- that hampers me, even when I summon the will to fight it. 

It's a Herculean struggle every day to get up, go to school, do my work. Sometimes I fail at it, and punish myself for it, seeing the mess I've made of my life. There's still hope, though. Right now, I'm okay. I'm still here. And to anyone else who struggles the same way I do: you can do this too. You'll be okay. And I know how ineffectual and small and empty that sounds, but it's true. 

We can get through this together, and together we can make a change in history.

PD Reflection

Last week, DigCit was roped into doing professional development for teachers. And on a half day, no less! However, reflecting on the session and the feedback that we recieved afterwards, I feel quite positive about how the whole thing went. It was pretty fun while it was going on- even teachers act like kids when they get the chance- and being able to teach them was an interesting role reversal.

I along with Lena presented an app called Peardeck. I personally very much enjoy using it, and I hope that came through in the presentation we gave. I had a good time showing off all the tools that it has, and explaining its potential to encourage participation and engage students during an otherwise boring lecture. The teachers seemed to like it as well- one came to me afterwards saying that I'd 'converted' her, and another even mentioned me by name in their feedback! I have a feeling I know who that was, but I'm not entirely certain.

However, as seems to be a trend with me and presentations, I forgot to mention some of the things that I meant to say. There's just so much I had to say and afterwards with some of the questions I recieved I got a little flustered, to say the least. I'd like to work on that, and even perhaps do some more PD sessions in order to increase my comfort level with talking about really anything at all.

I would have liked to have taken a position on my own project, of course- I think we all would have- but not doing that was fine. In fact, it was nice to give myself a crash course in something and then turn around and throw it at teachers while trying to convince them to use it. There's been as yet no safe space kit arriving at my door, and I'm starting to think it might not happen, but who knows. Pope Francis's arrival in DC appears to have disrupted even the postal service.

I hope any teachers reading this will respond and tell me what they thought or what they heard from other departments. While it's nice to have the positive feeback from the survey, constructive criticism is important too, and it's essential to improving at anything. My presentation skills especially need some work- so feel free to be honest. And students who encounter Nearpod, Peardeck, or vertical learning through Schoology discussions soon, talk about it! Say what you do and don't like, to teachers as well as your peers. This whole PD was about us. Let's make sure the implementation continues to be.

Links to Tools:

 

Peardeck: https://www.peardeck.com

Nearpod: https://www.nearpod.com