EDUCATION: Semester’s End

Never before have I gotten the urge to write another essay after a semester-full of them.  Even in Lit and Writing courses, while the match was lit to write, it was in a fictional vein rather than a more formal assessment of what was studied.

But with the winding down of this semester, and already having registered for Spring, I find myself drawn to the keyboard to dissect and analyze, get down in some sort of written record the process, progress and overview of Statistics.  Er, no, I mean New Media.

It’s very often been noted here in Spinning that my thought of college-level courses bases their value in the particular element of the discipline itself that teaches a different perspective or approach to situations that will arise in the future that have little or no relation to the topic of what was studied.  Logical, analytical, philosophical, and often the most used psychological manners of thinking are surely tools that will benefit students throughout their lifetimes.  That’s number one.

Number two is the side effect of learning about oneself within the environment of a course.  This may be even more worthwhile a goal, albeit a self-centered one.  Number three is, of course, the subject matter at hand; which naturally should be placed at the top of the list if it’s of vital importance to the future, such as medicine, law, teaching, skill oriented, etc.

The focus of this post may be geared towards the personal place I have entered via the open doorway that New Media offered.  I’ve learned much about myself and others in all the courses here at Tunxis.  I have had my opinions about the younger generation change drastically towards the better in many ways after dealing with and among them.  They’re not that different than we were; a bit more savvy, and a bit more immature at the same time.  Not as work-oriented, yet smarter in many ways.  I’ve seen out and out cheating on tests, and the more subtle ways of getting out of doing classwork, taking credit where none is honestly earned, "sliding"; and yet I’ve still seen the enormous amount of time and effort some will put in with a sense of passion despite jobs, kids, and a full course load.  What have I learned about me?  That I’m not always as tolerant or laidback as I would like to be.  That despite an A average, I’ll still fret over the possibility of less.  No, grades don’t really count all that much in the real world, but they do to me as a measure of using my own potential.  That’s where I see some differences in the variety of generations here on campus.

New Media has taught me even more about myself as well as about a variety of subjects that wouldn’t be covered.  I’ve applied the principles to my textual fiction writing, have gone beyond and will seek to follow the trail out as far as it will take me in other forms of narrative and in the use of computer-generated story beyond Word.  I can look at my morning sunrise and be aware of the sound input as birds wake up and fly into the storyworld. The wind has a voice that sets off motion in my visual space. 

One of the more obvious lessons learned is one that will be a question with many changing answers the further I travel the road; the one of time and how the past, present and future are malleable within the human mind.  Connected to each other in a linear form and yet manipulatable within fractions of a second to century chunks of space.  The present is constantly turning into the past, while simultaneously changing the potential future. 

Maybe I should have gone into higher education much sooner–further back into the past as I have known it.  Yet there is the thought as well that the timing can be said to be perfect; my mind is open to it–hopefully not only because of the excellent view of the horizon.  I will never live long enough to teach anyone else what I’m so very slowly learning.  The past that was ignored must be researched to understand where the world is now and where I am in it.  But shoulda’s don’t matter anymore.  I will never live up to my full potential because I see what it could be–limitless. 

And no one–at least not yet–lives forever.