Right Before the Fall

It honestly feels like I'm almost at the top of the roller coaster, and soon enough I'm going to fall. So much is ready to happen- the community pitch event is next week, I have the safe space kit I ordered a couple months ago, the first GSA interest meeting is next week, too. I have so much cautious optimism in the things that are happening at school. 

I just need to keep my caution in check. I need to remember that I can do things, even when I'm so young. 

All things are now ready. They just need a catalyst to set them off- and that's me. I can do this. And anyone reading this can, too.

Let's make the world sit up and look.

Genius Time Update

I feel like I've done both a little and a lot this week. I recently looked back at my deliverables for the first quarter, and it genuinely surprised me how many of them I've gotten done. A lot of it was prep stuff that I want to follow up on this quarter, but it's nice to be able to think that I've done something, even if it feels like mostly talking to people and starting to arrange huge things that will pan out later. 

I want to especially work on scheduling dates with administration for later in the year. I really want to make the Day of Silence something big, and I want to nail down definitively a date for my fourth-quarter seminar. 

The fact that I haven't done that already is a faliure- a 'not yet'- on my part. I've been falling down on this class, prioritizing other things, and I need to refocus, at least enough to get a few things done. 

After I do that, maybe I can talk to my mentor a bit more easily, knowing I'm more secure in what I'm doing. He wants to help, as do other people at church and TOY and at school, and I need to step up and lead them.

We'll see how that 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

A Week of MARK ZUCKERBERG!

I'll admit, I've been a bit falling-down this week on my passion project. I've been bogged down with other work and trying to juggle my emotional health, but this Sunday I've been more able to get around to and reflect on my work. Honestly, I've been wanting more and more to incorporate the idea of how prevalent mental health disorders are among MOGAI youth and adults, so I'll probably insert that into my project proposal revisions.

In fact, let's talk about mental illness. Let's talk about how when my brother told my parents about having depression- something it took immense courage to do- they were silent for long minutes, and he did not cry. After, however, when he shouted into the void, he said he'd been crying the hardest he had in months. 

Let's talk about how it took the life of two people I didn't know very well, and yet I could ache for them, and feel empty for them, and understand that all they wanted was to escape from a pain that seemed otherwise unbearable but their deaths sent shockwaves through thousands of people who would have loved to see them live.

Let's talk about how the only way I could pay tribute was to run to the arms of those thousands of people, and how still I'm not sure of my humanity because of the way I process grief.

Depression and anxiety are the two main problems in my life, but there are those struggling with more serious things- bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and more- who are still human, still trying to keep it together, still trying to fight the 'crazy' and 'insane' and 'weirdo' and worse that still stigmatize them.

Depression isn't something that you can just say 'I want to stop being sad!' and suddenly be happy. It's so painful for me, feeling the world's agony as well as an immensity of my own, that I'm often numb instead of sad, even. It wrecks my eating and sleeping habits, my relationships with people, my ability to do the things I love and are good for me- especially schoolwork and exercise.

Anxiety feeds off of and back into depression, exponentially increasing my fear of faliure at simple tasks. When I'm not perfect, then I must be worthless, I must be stupid, there must be no reason to value myself. It's as paralyzing as my depression.

And yet, there are people who are suffering so much more than me. I'm blessed to be able to say this at all. But I want to say this, to destigmatize we who fight every day a battle someone neurotypical can't quite imagine.

I just want people to understand. I can say this here, at the professional development session that I will be helping to orchestrate, in places where there are people I trust to believe and be gentle with us. Below I'll link several organizations that help fight mental illness and even try to find a good cure.

Please, at least open a discussion. Let students speak their minds, and you might be surprised at what you might find. Be patient when there aren't words to describe what we're going through, and when we simply can't speak for fear or for whatever else compels us to be nonverbal.

Try to find that within yourself, and try to treat us all like human beings. That's all anyone wants, I think.

Links & Resources:

Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance: http://www.dbsalliance.org/site/PageServer?pagename=home

Anxiety and Depression Association of America: http://www.adaa.org

National Alliance on Mental Illness: http://www.nami.org

List of helplines around the world: http://herestotheteenss.tumblr.com/post/129593832355