Farewell to the Quarter

Now that my other classes final projects and my PhD application are under control, I wanted to give a quick wrap up of the quarter in EDUC 391x. The course was an interesting challenge, and very different from my other courses. In all, it was an impetus for me to refine my academic approach far more than any other class.

Because I attended St. John's College, I am a reader, a conversationalist, a thinker, and a writer, but often I tend to get stuck in theory. Even though I appreciate very much the role of action as an outcome of thought, is it also easy for me to stay satisfied with unresolved questions and issues, storing them for later consideration. That is not necessarily a mistake, per se, but a healthy dose of prototyping between contemplations will actually push my thought process further than simple time.

Of course, EDUC 391x was not my only class that inspired me to think this way, but in many ways it was the most relevant. Dr. Kim never gave us the impression that what we were doing was fake, and indeed it wasn't. For my own part, I do hope to do something like what I did for my digital artifacts and final presentation as my Master's project. I believe I am not the only student in the class for whom this is true.

The final presentations themselves went much better than I expected, too. While the crowd was not enormous, it was big enough, and I managed to make a handful of contacts, each of which could end up being instrumental in the implementation of my ideas. All of those possibilities look a little different from each other, and some might be mutually exclusive, but the fact that I have them at all is a testament to the quality of the class.

Pedagogically, there were points at which I questioned the class's style. While I'm all for inspiring students to work for themselves, a higher degree of structure might have improved the quality of work we all did. That's not because we are slackers - far from it - but rather because other classes do structure our efforts over the course of the quarter, and without regular assignments, we tend to work harder on the things those other classes are asking us to do immediately, rather than the artifacts that are still weeks away in 391.

In all, though, this was an important class for me, and I think for many of my classmates. As I pursue a PhD - whether that be next year or in the future - the exposure to action research alone was worth the class. I love the idea of not only researching a problem (and solution), but trying to do something about it at the same time.