Masterpiece
Reflective Essay
I had to
make a tremendous adjustment this past year. This course was completely
different than any other class I’ve ever had in my life. There’s nothing bad
with that, but there definitely was an adjustment I had to make. For me,
learning always had a bad connotation because I connect it to school which I
despise, however this course taught me to embrace learning. It’s much easier to
learn when it was what you are passionate about, such as my masterpiece. I
learned a lot in this course, but I learned the most about world hunger because
of how much time I spent on my masterpiece. At the beginning of the course it
was hard for me to get use to Open Source Learning, but I got used to it and
prefer it over the traditional curriculum.
One of
the biggest aspects of this course is the level of trust. Without the teachers
constantly giving me assignments with deadlines, it means that I had a tendency
to do assignments late or not at all. But, I did all the important assignments,
and anytime not spent on those assignments were designated to my masterpiece. I
tried to honor this trust as best as I could. Three non-fiction characters I
could compare myself to are Beowulf, Macbeth, and Bernard. The reason I would
compare myself to them is because I feel like I’ve been on similar journeys as
them. The Beowulf comparison is somewhat true because my whole life I haven’t
really had much difficulty in being successful, as did Beowulf. He did have
some challenges later on in life, which I feel that I will face when I get to college.
The reason for the Macbeth comparison is because we both have an unrelenting desire
to get what we want. I work every day for a goal which is to play basketball
professionally, no matter what it takes. Macbeth was working every day to become
king of pretty much the world, and did whatever it took to be have success.
Lastly I compare myself to Bernard because I sometimes feel like an outcast
that is always questioning the order and structure of society. Ever since I can
remember I’ve always questioned why things are, which is what Bernard did.
Something
that made me laugh is when one day it was raining outside, and Dr. Preston said
“this is great weather to nap in”, and I said “we should take a nap right now”.
And Dr. Preston laughed and said ha ha “f**k you” in a joking manner. This made
me really laugh out loud. A unifying theme that I saw in the presentations in
my class was connecting everyone together. There were a couple of presentations
that dealt with music and how it changes your emotions and it’s a universal
language that can bring people of different cultures together. There were other
presentations such as equality among humanity and even the similarities of
twins that shows how connected we really are.
I think
that my hero’s journey represented my senior year in a nutshell. I was called
to a journey where I had to maintain good grades for Stanford. There was times
where it was stressful, and it was hard to keep my grades up because it was my
senior and my lack of motivation. My journey could also represent my
masterpiece, and how world hunger was calling my name. In this, I did seek a
mentor which was Mrs. Byrne, who helped me and guided me through this. After my
masterpiece I did return englightened with a lot of information, and a
different way to look at hunger. For a literary technique I’m going to come up
with a simile to represent this course, my masterpiece, and my senior year. My
senior year was as stressful as a ton of bricks being held up by a twig, yet as
enjoyable as the beach on a warm sunny day. (Sorry the beach simile was kind of
subjective.)
