Ken Robinson - How school kills creativity

- Everyone has an interesting education
   - we're invested in our education, it's our future
   - unpredictability of what education is going to be like in the future
- all kids have talents but we squash them
- creativity is as important as literacy in education, treat it with the same status
- children are not frightened of being wrong; if you are prepared to be wrong you will not have anything original
- we stigmatize mistakes
- we are "educating people out of their creativity"
- we are born artists and we grow out of it; the goal is to stay an artist
- Every education system has same hierarchy: Math/English, Humanities, then Arts.
- What is education for? Who are the winners at the end? Goal is the university professors - they are the ones who come out on top.
- Stayed away from subjects you like because you think you won't get a job doing it. (i.e. You like music, but you won't be a musician, etc.)
- Brilliant, Creative people don't think they are because they failed at school.
- Degrees are essentially becoming worthless; degree inflation. Now need a masters, or Ph.D to get a job, not just an undergrad degree
- Creativity comes about through interdisciplinary way of thinking about things
- corpus collosum is thicker in woman - better at multitasking
- we should adopt a new conception of human ecology; we need to rethink they fundamental principles in which we education our children; we are over-mining our mind.
- We need to educate our children's whole being

"And so...?" "I'm just sayin', all this was significant because...."

I hope my readers' main take away from my education experience narrative would be to get a better understanding of who I am, and what has shaped the person I have become. What shapes a person includes their environment, they people they surround themselves with, and their experiences. I touch upon all of these points in my paper so I hope people can get a snapshot of my background, and a glimpse into my decisions, in order to get a better understanding of who I am. Obviously I am not writing my life's story in my educational narrative. I am, however, writing about arguably the biggest decision I have had to make in my life thus far. To understand my decision making process says much about the person I am, and how it has affected me.

Freewrite: How I learned which college was right for me

The process of learning at which school I belonged took me almost two full years. At the age of sixteen when I first started looking at colleges I was set on Lewis & Clark College, a (very) small private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. For some reason I knew that was where I belonged. It felt like I would fit in there, and it was comfortable for me. There were several events, conversations, and experiences, in the first year which lead me to believe that LC was not the right school for me. I disregarded those thoughts after I traveled down to California the summer after freshmen year. During the summer I had said to myself, "This year is going to be better than the last, you will finally love it there." To my little surprise, I disliked it even more my sophomore year. It was easy to entertain the idea of leaving during my freshman year but after a much hate sophomore year I had to make the tough decision to leave such a great opportunity. I don't regret going there, because it was the right place for me for a while, and it taught me a lot about myself. Even though it was such a fantastic opportunity, it wasn't the perfect place for me.

What made the decision almost even harder was that if I did decide to leave I had no plans on where to go. I decided to leave during the summer and by that point, the time to apply to the UW (the college I decided was right for me) was a couple months gone. Would I take a quarter off? Would I lounge around in my pajamas all quarter? Although this has nothing to do with my learning experience, this is the outcome of it all… The fact is, I have learned more about where I belong, and who I want to surround myself with, in the short amount of time since I have left Lewis & Clark than I ever would have if I were still there.

5 Visuals Speaking to my Experince

The small school of Lewis & Clark College... tini tiny

Still playing the game of softball in college (I'm #20 in the back)

This represents how professors held my hand at LC

"Take It Easy" by The Eagles

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEzTdBJUHO8

This represents how the student population just takes it easy... just living life.

"Temperature" by Sean Paul

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW2MmuA1nI4

The song my "friends" and I always sang to on the way to parties.

Successful Prewriting

For me, in the past, I have had to do much prewriting before opening a Word Document to write the actual essay. First, I have generate many ideas about what to write; anything that pops into my head I will write down. From those general ideas I form a loose outline. I will start by writing down the ideas I want to be in each paragraph of the body of the paper (I do not do anything for the introduction and the conclusion until the body of the paper is complete). Then I will write a more fleshed out outline. In a couple classes my professors wanted the students to turn in an outline with complete sentences instead of a rough draft. I have learned to love this style of prewriting because once it is done, the paper is most of the way written. Instead of fragments, which are sometimes are for me to string together to form a well written essay, I have already written full sentences waiting to be copied into my essay. From there, I will write the body of my paragraph followed by my introduction then conclusion.

The Most Important Lesson I Have Ever Learned

The most important thing I have ever learned was how to lose. All of my childhood I had played on winning sports teams: I was always on the championship team, whether it be for recreational soccer, basketball, select softball. During my sophomore year of high school I was a part of the Washington State Softball Championship team. The joy I felt is indescribable. The next year we lost in the championship game. And the next year we lost again in the championship game. I had to realize it was a great feat getting to those games, especially since most everyone doubted we would even make it to state. I learned to lose graciously, and to get back in the game sooner. Learning to lose graciously also has taught me to take criticism and to be shut down. In the real world, beyond participation trophies and a pat on the back for effort, people get shut down. It is the ability to rebound from criticism that makes us great.

Struggles of a Student

This blog post is about the struggle I went through to write a psychology paper in one night.... It is shocking; prepare yourself.

It is a good thing I was so delirious during my time awake because I would never have taken these "selfies" to document my two days awake. On Sunday morning I woke up bright and early at 8am, played a couple of softball games then dedicated the rest of my night writing the paper. I thought the paper was going to take maybe until midnight (I had started it at 6pm) to write. Nope, it took me until 6am the next morning. At that point I was pretty awake with the mass amounts of coffee I had consumed over the past twelve hours so I decided to go on a run and to lift weights. I thought I was going to pass out when I was done with classes for the day, which wasn't going to be until 5pm. But no, of course I did not. It wasn't until 7am Tuesday morning did I fully pass out and at that point I slept for twelve hours straight. 7am-7pm.

Lucky for everyone else, I was taking "selfies: throughout this process. Now, these are not the "selfies" that some people take that say, "how should I look if I were to feel this way?" or "I'm trying to look cute but say at the same time 'I'm in the library and only taking pics to tell other people I'm in the library'". No, no. These pictures tell a story of a girl who likes her sleep but was forced to stay awake. These pictures are real.

3:30am, Monday morning, Going strong. I'm thinking, "Why am I still in the library?" 

4:30am, can't keep my eyes open. My eye started twitching. Need more coffee.

5:30am. The delusional state.

I ate the entire bag Milanos! 

Crying. I never want to do this again.

After my classes, trying to fall asleep. I ate Cheez-Its. 

The time where I started posing with inanimate objects. A plate with balsamic vinaigrette, my 1000 tablet bottle of ibuprofen, and a disposable cup.

I finally showered at 7pm Monday! I hadn't showered after my games Sunday because I went straight to the library. 

7pm Tuesday thinking, "I just made Tuesday disappear. It's like magic."

Forever struggling,

Caitlin