Alex-Reflection on the Learning Process

          There is truly no way to compare the styles of learning found in your traditional high-school setting and those found here in WTS. Passive vs. active learning, group vs. solo environments, heavy guidance vs. initiative and personal drive, these two types of learning are such polar opposites that it is hard for me, a person who has only learned in said traditional school setting to even think of this program as school, it is such a foreign experience that it does not compute. This new system is something that depending on the student may work or fail, but it is something that everyone should experience.
          The benefits of this system to a new student such as myself are clear cut from the start. We have the independence to pursue our interests in the fashion of our choice and to do so on a timeline that we ourselves create. It also teaches life skills that one would not other learn otherwise. In our school every english class is the same, you memorize vocab, you read books and have tests on what you learned, you write the same essays over and over again and while the words change, in the end the sentiment and the learning is nothing different year after year. This is not the fault of the teachers, it is just how the system works but here we are completing interviews, doing research, making videos, making a difference. This class is something different and it is braking the mold. The drawbacks of the class are more subtle and may be more subjective to the individual but to me they are as follows. The lack of daily updates as to what is happening leads to my forgetting what needs to be done as classes with whom I interact with daily out compete WTS for my attention, and reaching out to and meeting up with high powered people with whom I need to interview is frankly a little terrifying. The last be issue to me is that I work best when I can discuss things heavily with people face to face. I am not terribly eloquent in virtual conversations but being able to sit and work on things with someone helps me hugely and this leads to an issue as I am far removed from the rest of my group. I can only hope that I can learn from this in the future.
          As I touched on in the last paragraph I have discovered that I really need face to face interactions with my peers to do work, or at least someone who knows the subject to be a sounding board fro my ideas. Without this I can begin to tailspin and get out of control in my work. Another thing I have found is that I am excellent at research, diving deep into a topic and finding key data, but I am less than stellar at reaching out to people and completing interviews. In terms of how I can apply this to my work for the remainder of the class I can think of no other option other than to "suck it up buttercup." These are not issues that can truly be solved, but simply something that must be dealt with and so be it.
          In the future I will try harder to "keep my eye on the ball" as it were and focus down, and hopefully bang out a few interviews! I think in the future I will also work a little better on keeping track of time, as demonstrated by this blog post I rather messed up on that and let the Christmas break catch me off guard, and oh boy did that end up badly. So from now on I am going to check the dates of important events in advance and make sure that if there are any conflicts that I do my post early instead of letting it catch me off guards end end up late.

Until Next Time!!!