Every single MPoL and TPoL that I have done has the same goal. At the end of the day, I just want to learn. I want to be able to learn as much as I possibly can about the world, the people, and the things around me, and be able to take that learning and apply it.
This year, I have learned a lot. I have learned a lot about myself, and a lot of information in general. I have also learned how I don’t want to learn, and how I want school to exist as a place for me.
For the first time ever, this year I found myself not learning. I was hearing what was being told to be in class, but none of it was sticking. It was like everything that I was hearing was like a puzzle piece that just so slightly didn’t click into place. It all made sense, but it didn’t stay in place. I couldn’t focus in class, I couldn’t take a break, and I couldn’t get any work done. I started disliking school in general, and disliking learning, which has always been my worst nightmare; something that I love so much becoming a negative thing in my life.
Our field study for me was a chance to have a break from being in a school environment. It gave me the chance to take a step away from what was happening here, and step towards learning, which is always what I just want to do.
Grade 11 has always been known as “The hard year.” It serves as the precursor to grade 12, and life after high school, and an enormous amount of weight is put on grade 11 as a year to succeed in. I am aware that I am a person who puts an enormous amount of weight on myself to succeed in the first place, and paired with the pressure of grade 11, it made for quite a stressful year.
When we were in class on Friday, and Ms. Willemse reminded us that this would be our last TPoL ever, something sort of clicked in me. I have one last chance for everything at this point. I am so close to graduating, so close to university, so close to growing up and moving out of high school. In our last few projects, we have not been given an opportunity to revise our work after a certain point. Once it’s done, it’s done. While it has been incredibly stressful to know that even mediocre work will be accepted and taken as it is, it has taught me to let go. After a while, overthinking and overworking something will do more harm than good.
I want to do work that is up to my standards, as well as my teachers standards, and I want the work that I do to actually mean something to me. I want to be okay with letting work go, and I want to be okay with admitting the fact often that what I see as mediocre is actually pretty decent, and that just accepting that fact will save me from so much stress and anxiety.
I am ready to move on to grade 12 because of the fact that I can admit that I am not fully ready yet. I have so much more room to grow, and I am learning to allow myself the time to grow. Of course I want to maintain the academic standard that I have set for myself since the beginning, but I also want to completely redefine that standard, and I want to spend my last year at Seycove redefining that for myself.