Papers 2019-05-06 I’ve always felt there was something wrong about writing papers for school. Since I was small I’ve had writing assignments for school. Perhaps most memorably, I was in maybe 5th grade and assigned to write a report about an animal—let’s say a Grey crowned crane. So, of course, I went on Wikipedia to find information about this bird, and was immediately presented with paragraphs of concise, accurate, grammatically correct writing about the bird’s appearance, habitat, and behavior: the exact categories I was assigned to write about. Why was I writing something new if this beautiful work was already written? Sensibly, I copy-and-pasted the article into my Word document and called it a day. Looking back, I see what was wrong with my assessment in that situation. That was plagiarism, and not cool. But more importantly, that writing assignment wasn’t about creating a beautiful collection of info about the Grey crowned crane. It was an exercise—a practice, a toy example—built to teach young me about reading from sources, extracting relevant data, and typing it up correctly. When I was told that copy-pasting wasn’t ok, I remember feeling confused. My teacher wanted a report on Cranes, I provided one to them. What was wrong with that? And why was I being asked to re-write this information about Cranes in the first place, when anyone could already go to Wikipedia and read all they wanted? What’s really interesting—and to me hopeful—about this story is that small me dearly wanted to create something that people would read. I wanted to be useful. My frustration at the Grey crowned crane assignment stemmed from a desire to write things that were new, things that I couldn’t copy from anywhere because they didn’t exist anywhere. Later, in 9th grade, I participated as the main student in the first satellite Agile Learning Center. Participating in self-directed learning definitively proved to me that education should be structured around the drive a student already has. Spending time in ALCs (as somewhere between a participant and a facilitator) convinced me that everyone has a drive. A student will best learn to read when it is required that they read to carry out their interests—whether those are playing Minecraft or keeping up with a comic book series on their own. A student will best learn to code by following their drive to create a video game, not by taking a class with no end result. We become skilled at the activities we do often, and we do often the activities that are required to reach our goals. Some of the most rewarding projects I completed during my time in ALC were the ones I shared, and the ones that people out in the world interacted with. These projects had a purpose. I learned coding and 3D printing and electrical wiring not because a teacher told me to, not even just because I wanted to create a project. I learned these things to create something beautiful and share it with people who would see it, think about it, learn from it, and perhaps even build one themselves. Now I’m in college and I’m much closer to writing things that have never been written before. But even so, I’m not sharing these papers with anyone. I’m playing a thousand-dollar game for a letter-grade, not adding my part to the world. I think I’ll start sharing some of my completed assignments, the ones I’m proud of. I won’t say I believe 100% of what I’m arguing in these works, and I can’t say they’ll be relevant. But the ones that feel quality to me also feel like they should be out there. Out here. Thinking about 10-year-old me again: what could my teachers have done to work with my desire to be useful, while still fulfilling their goals of teaching me to write? How much of our education systems are preparation for preparation for preparation for……? An intuition I had a few days ago went something like this: People are good at the things they do a lot. So I don’t actually have to learn all the things I’m being taught in all these classes that thoroughly. All I have to do is become familiar enough with them that if, later, I start doing some work or some project that relates, I’ll be able to pick back up with a jogging start. From then on, my drive to do that work or complete that project will take care of the difficult learning that I could be pouring energy into now, ahead of time. But does this make sense? It goes against nearly everything university culture tells me, but it feels right somehow. Can I integrate this ideology into my college life? I know the vision of a widespread standard for driven learning will exist. Can it live today? On my campus?