Disregarding Doubt

IIf you have been following my blog since the beginning, by now you may have seen a pattern in terms of what kind of work I, alongside my classmates, are doing at certain times of the year. Within PLP there are a few annual traditions that we always know are coming, yet they still remain a mystery until shortly before they actually take place. This past month featured an event that was no exception; The Winter Exhibition. In fact, this year it was a mystery for even longer than usual, which as you can imagine didn’t exactly instil a sense of hope in us. Leading up to the exhibition itself, the beginning of December was largely taken up by our Seattle field study. Even throughout the trip we were curious what our projects would be for the exhibition, knowing that back home the other grades were all hands on deck preparing for the fateful day. Little did we know however, that the trip itself would end up making up and inspiring a vast portion of our projects. Like any good story thought, you can’t begin with the climax, so let’s rewind a little and take a look at what the idea behind this whole unit was about.

All our learning for this unit stemmed from our driving question; Why does it take a crazy person to change the world? So to start off, we had to define what crazy meant, and that’s exactly what we did. We spent the majority of a whole class breaking down the term ‘crazy’ and finding appropriate synonyms. This helped us get a grasp of what it was we were trying to identify within the ‘crazy’ figures. Our first assignment was to create and present a Pecha Kucha on an influential person featured in Apples “The Crazy Ones” ad campaign. A Pecha Kucha is a presentation style that includes an autoplaying slideshow composed of 20, 20 second images where the presenter talks in a more casual format while using the images to enhance what they’re saying. For my presentation, I did Paul McCartney. This assignment was a really good one. I enjoyed the process of researching and fact collecting, and practicing speaking in front of any audience is always good practice and is something I’m willing to do. 

Is Paul McCartney Crazy?

Next up was our Seattle trip, but I won’t discuss that here, that’s for another post entirely. Instead we can jump back to the Winter Exhibition. About a week prior to the exhibition night, we found out what we would be doing; creating a thesis regarding our driving question, and presenting a Pecha Kucha about it. Everyone was relatively shocked, it wasn’t something we were expecting. It’s so funny to think back to it now because we had no idea what was to come. We all got to work on these presentations, and just three days before the exhibition, the teachers told us we were going to be doing the whole presentation without any notes. Nothing but our memory, and what we could draw from our images. This was an UPSET, it did not go down well. If I’m honest, I was definitely a wuss about it. I tried to convince myself that this was unfair by the teachers, but I quickly realized that it wasn’t quite as inhumane as I thought. I knew I was going to have to do it one way or another, so it wouldn’t be worth the stress.

The next three days were jam packed full of preparing and practicing my presentation. I knew my thesis was strong because I had heard the words “Why does it take a crazy person to change the world?” more than my own name in the month prior. It got to a point where I wasn’t super worried, I kind of just wanted it to be time for my presentation. I wasn’t really thinking “Man, I wish it was winter break already” because I had put so much time, effort, and thought in to my presentation that I wanted to see it all pan out, and be able to experience the feeling of successfully having completed it. All that was left to do before my time was to help plan and execute the decoration of our room for the exhibition. Not gonna lie, decorating isn’t exactly my jam, so I more or less left that to the people who thrive in that environment, and it worked out really well. 

Right up until my time slot I was in the back room practicing my presentation. I was totally ready, so when it came time to get up there, I was pretty excited. I think I’m very honest when I write on this blog, and I’ll tell the truth if I know I didn’t do well on something. Having said that though, I think it’s only fair to myself to be honest when I know I did well. That’s why I’m comfortable saying that I am very proud of my presentation and I think I did a great job. All the effort I put in to it payed off and that’s a feeling I will take over doing boring, easy schoolwork any day of the week. I can now see that the teachers’ decision to make our lives harder was one that I appreciate after having succeeded. Pushing us to complete quality work in a short period of time requires us to focus ourselves, producing learning that is hard to duplicate elsewhere. So for that, I want to thank my teachers.

(Video)