Masterpiece Essay

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Taylor Harms

Doctor David Preston

Expository Composition

1 June 2014

                                                Entering the Other Side

            The beginning of senior year would fill each student with excited, anticipation, and ambition for the year to come, some students more than others, but it was universal. Coming into the Expository Composition course I was under the impression that we would be doing a lot of reading of articles or books, to be responded to later on. Singing up for it the previous year, I just basically picked a class enei-minie-moe style, but I couldn’t have chosen any better as I now have learned. I had no idea of what was about to come. When Dr. Preston explained what the course would really consist of, I was shocked. Never would I have imagined a course that actually encouraged electronic usage in the classroom and the internet as a basic medium for most of our work. He would remind us still that there may be substitutes for mediums and the method of learning, but there is no substitute for raw hard work and the most basic and efficient style of learning: when it comes natural. When it is relateable and doesn’t feel like our previous connotation of the word “learning”.

        

    The Open Source Learning course itself was dynamic; it would change everyday. Students now had the chance to “hack” their education and make it whatever they want it to be which would give way to our masterpieces at the end of the year. I could recall so many days where Preston would be lecturing about something having to do with the minimum requirements we still had to complete because of school regulations and he would leave it up to us to figure out just how we would do it. Someone would pop up with a suggestion and just like a wildfire it would spread and the conversation would drift into something else, still productive to us, but made for us so learning was much more natural. There was a common core book in the room at all times, and many times Preston would pick it up and ask us if we wanted to do the class just like all the others: straight text book and pen and paper, this would reinvigorate the system, motivating those few who didn’t believe in it. This is something very new and we already barely had the OK from the school board to have a class like this, it was basically up to us to prove all of them wrong, this was our way to leave a mark on education.

            Coming into this year, I was confident in my writing skills, I knew that I possessed somewhat of a talent for writing as I had taken AP English and U.S. History the year before

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which had sharpened my skills. I was confident and even a little cocky, and this course was a reality check. I now wasn’t writing for a teacher, but rather the world. I was aware that everybody would have access to my assignments and responses so I had to be sure that they were of top quality which was good training for the adult world. The job and college markets are carnivorous so any step forward needs to be the best representation of myself. It improved my thinking skills because now I had to look at my work from the perspective of an audience, and even competing with other students to have the top responses.

            The end of the year masterpiece presentations would be a culmination of what we had learned throughout the year. Day in and day out our lectures would consist of the impact of social networking and how we can use every element of the internet to our advantage. Networking brings people together intellectually, romantically, and for me, professionally. My exposure to the world wide web is what led me to finding an interest in civil engineering and a spot on a trip to visit a prestigious college to collaborate with real third year architecture students, it put me on the level of people I would never expect. They looked to me for answers and it was almost overwhelming. They showed me a side of education that was inspiring; and it is the other side. The other side of what a classroom could be; not divided by cliques or seating arrangements but by a common passion and subject. These people made it to the other side and thrived, they survived the obsurdity of high school social politics.

            I realize that I haven’t really defined Open Source Learning according to myself. Well I see it best defined as: making education your own project. The product is you, make it the most marketable by doing things well because you truly enjoy it, nobody can take that away. Doing this alone is difficult many times by nature because finally having the chance to make your own path can be scary, so having a classmate next to you is comforting. They are in the same boat as you and that develops a sense of trust. Everybody is there trying to reach their own value of success and not everybody has the same talents. For instance a person wanting to make clothing brands may not know the technical side of the market, so how could they be successful? They can’t, that is why a person interested in business would be a perfect match for them, making them both depend on each other to get to the other side. The students of this course have earned the trust of parents, peers, an officials that we can do things on our own. That this crazy new method of learning can be successful and that the proof is in the masterpiece. The students and teacher took the requirements, incorporated them into a format that makes sense, and completed them with even more marketable value that before.

            The development of this trust however couldn’t have been possible in just any environment. The environment of our classroom was more like a coffee shop with the teacher as just another person there. With his sarcasm, loose body language, and quickness to shut

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down a person out of line with witty observations and actually taking the time to know the person, Dr. Preston seemed like one of the guys just messing around with his friend. It made him more approachable, especially knowing that he knew numerous people in just about any field, so he is one of our greatest sources.

            I have reconnected with a passion through this course. One of helping people, not in Gabi’s way of compassion, but one concerning a quality of life. Changing the very place in which generations of tomorrow would learn. Learning about it came natural when he introduced me to professors and students and I saw that other people did care about this, that I could use my excitement for something rather abstract and make it concrete.

            My time in this course I feel was well spent. Sure I had some off days in which I just wouldn’t even try to care, but that was because I was looking at it through the wrong lense. As explained, I, and everybody else, suffered from the brainwashing of older styles of education which is what made it difficult to switch, but once I did, I had seen the light of it all; the other side.