Before christmas I talked to two professors of my school. They both told me indirectly that my project is a bit big for the time that is reserved for making it. The fact that I'm going to be traveling 1,5 months of the reserved 3 months for this project isn't really helping.. hahaha.
I'm making a Flash-game(a game you can play with your browser) for a company.
I mean it is a big project. It just might even be too big for me to finish it in time. But it's not "fair" for my teachers to tell me that I'm not able to finish it in time. Hell! I prefer taking too big project that actually forces me to learn new stuff.
I could design a visual appearance for some company but there is nothing new in that. This is the problem in our school. They are not forcing/making us to learn new stuff in our own time. I think students need balanced amount of support and forcing if school expects them to evolve to something and learn new stuff.
I know these two teachers didn't mean anything personal by telling me to make my project a bit smaller. It's their long experience saying that these things finally fail. Is it pessimism or realism? I don't know and don't really care. I'm planning to show them that it was pessimism, at least this time. Still, little support would be nice.
sunnuntai 30. joulukuuta 2007
My final project for school PART_1
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Go for it! It's win win. Time will tell, and whatever the situation, nobody should knock it before they've seen the process and end result. Come what may, it's a learning experience.
I know what you mean about lack of encouragement and not being demanding enough. People can't really truly excel unless they're given the right kind of tools, coaching, encouragement. We can do so much more than we even know...
We had this teacher in college, who was known as a top notch lecturer in Asian history. I had just studied that same period of history in prep school, and got a full score in that final (essay) exam. I wanted to redo the course, because the teacher was so well known and liked. Little did I anticipate that her exams were all multiple choice and her classes extremely unchallenging, and not just because I knew most of the material from before. I think I got a B+ or something in the MC exam and course (and as I said, they were easy.) I still have the book here at home, maybe I ought to reread it sometime... Then and there, I couldn't muster up any energy or motivation to learn, mostly because the teacher limited the material to the very basics, and I'm sure she knew a ton more about each and every event in that period of history.
There IS such a thing as "too easy." I agree with you: letting students off easy is akin to underestimating their potential, and then they never stretch and learn or learn how to withstand challenges and solve real problems. And let's not forget that "too easy" is actually the preferred state of existence for very few people, regardless of what we say. I've known people who seem to muck around as far as paid work is concerned, but who are excellent skiers or climbers and put 110% effort into that (or something else they do well.) We all need a passion like that - not to mention that constantly learning something new and perfecting our skills keeps the brain from aging (true story; it was in the papers last month.)
"Too easy" can get people into trouble. Adults are in my opinion no different from kids, in the sense that when some of us become bored most FIND WAYS of making things exciting and challenging, and sometimes at our expense ie. not in a good or a safe way. Think about an assembly line worker who begins to improvise ("let me try and do this FASTER if I can!") at the risk of injury. Not good. I f'd up at work this year when I wanted to fix something (which was in itself a good thing, but not something that was within my jurisdiction) - and mostly because I was kind of bored with my job description and wanted to show initiative.
And that one time in urology... After four days of transcribing those texts, I just cracked up. I started laughing after making a silly typo, and I kept laughing so hard I had to step outside for a minute to get myself together. I couldn't believe there were people there who had done the same thing for YEARS. I cannot begin to tell you how extremely unchallenging the work is in a hundred different ways. The greatest challenge is to keep your sanity, while you fear for your cognition, working machine-like for 7 h 45 min a day five days a week. Oh my gosh.
Not to get all depressing, but it's pretty harsh that sometimes the best & safest ways to act and be (e.g. at some offices/places of work) truly is to just follow a very set practice and not even think about departing from it lest you suffer the consequences. Tragic. Humans are by nature creative beings and we want to do good and well and improve things and learn, I'm absolutely certain. (Have you seen the movie Michael Clayton?)
Sorry, my comment is longer than your post, as usual.
I totally agree with what you just wrote. We're hardly ever pushed to the next level in school or in any other place, at least not in Finland. Of course there are exceptions.
I think that everyone has the same amount of energy (depending of your few little factors like food, sports, etc.) and it all comes down to what are you going to do with that energy. Sometimes it's nice to just idle but after a while it gets boring. After a while if you don't do anything idling is your new normal rhythm and it gets harder to push yourself. If school is easy for the first 3 years you can't make students work hard during the 4th year just like that.
Probably the first time when someone start demanding from us comes when we start working for some huge company and we have to start making some money.
Haven't seen the Michael Keaton movie. I'll check it out.
Oh, I don't mind if comments are longer than my posts :)
Michael Clayton, sorry. "MC" is the name of the movie and the male lead is George Clooney. Very good.
And I agree, this whole thing with underperformance is specifically a problem with Finland. I feel kind of disappointed realizing that I could've "done better" by not trying so hard! Most people only do the bare minimum, because that's what they're paid to do. My incentive in my current job has been to learn as much about operational techniques and pathology etc. and I've learned a lot. I know I shouldn't care, but at the same time I almost feel that to look normal, I have to hide my interest so other people don't think I'm weird or perhaps trying to outdo them and kiss up to the boss. I went ahead and fixed a couple of things at work yesterday (looked for and replaced batteries to the hallway clock; changed the keyboards for two computing units) - someone got mad because I didn't ask her permission to upgrade the old keyboard, even though I kept the old keyboard around, should she want it! WTH? I'm just trying to help, and I certainly helped myself, because the upgrade was long overdue.
Even if I had no ambitions beyond that particular job, I'd still like to learn as much as possible, because the material is interesting (how often do we get to think about e.g. brain surgery anywhere else?) This is pretty much what an yrittäjä/entrepreneur is made of, but I don't really have the appetite for risk, nor do I have a business idea or the know-how to go about the whole thing.
What's considered good performance here would be mediocre almost anywhere else where there's real competition (I've heard some people say that's especially true in the arts), and what's considered a lot of pressure is normal pace in e.g. New York. I'm not saying I liked working 80 hr weeks, but still... Now, looking back, even if and especially if I'd just gone to some interesting ammattikoulu after high school I might have graduated with a good job at 22 and saved myself a lot of trouble and my health too (granted I would've missed out on a lot, but still...)
Oh well, such is life. Je ne regrette rien... Honestly. Just toying with the idea. But now... happy new year!!! It's a brand new year and a chance for change.
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