A Post About The End Of The World

Hello!

Despite the ominous title, this blog post isn’t about dying. (Phew!) It’s a post about new beginnings, and singing students, and-

You know what, let’s just skip the cheesy introduction and get to the part where everyone humiliates themselves by displaying their questionable singing voices to the class already.

The standard driving question for this project was:

Who or what has challenged your worldview in the transition from elementary school to high school?

The transition from elementary school to high school. Fun.

Honestly, that was kind of the last thing I wanted to talk about. Especially in front of my peers. And teachers. Not to mention sing about.

That’s right, folks: the final product was to create a parody of a song detailing our experience transitioning to Grade 8. And not just any song. It’s the End of the World As We Know It by R.E.M.

So that’s what that title was all about. It all becomes clear now.

I think I’m rambling. I should probably start talking about the actual learning I did, since that’s the point of this post.

The first step to figuring out how our worldview changed was to create a mind map. This also happened to be our first Milestone.

I admit that I had trouble thinking up things that “challenged my worldview”, but once I started thinking about it as what was different from Grade 7 to Grade 8, it became a lot easier.

After that, we started to write our new lyrics.

This part was hard, too. I find it difficult to share my feelings generally, and my feelings on the Gr 7 – Gr 8 transition are a particularly sensitive topic. I eventually decided to pretend I was writing in my journal, and everything started pouring out. I actually had to tone it down a bit, because I was getting a bit depressed reading it. Now I think my lyrics are much better and are an accurate description of my transition.

Side note: The lyrics of the original song are crazy and chaotic, and don’t make much sense. Seriously, look them up. Mine are equally all over the place.

That’s great, it starts with a school change

New and big, and scary

And I thought I was not afraid

High expectations, listen to yourself learn

School serves its own needs,

Don’t miss-serve your own needs

Speed it up a lot, chop chop, full strength

The ladder starts to clatter

With a fear of height, down, height

A total of 1 friend, alone despite my mind’s claims

I really need at break, I need to sleep tonight

Project, got to finish in a hurry

With the teachers breathing down your neck.

Class by class, students baffled, swamped, stumped, stunned

Look at the low grade, fine then

Uh oh, overflow, too much homework, and no time

But it’ll do, save yourself, serve yourself

Time serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed

Tell me that in French, I’ll understand it, right, right

You vitriolic, workaholic, slam fight, bright light

Feeling pretty psyched

It’s the end of my world as I know it

It’s the end of my world as I know it

It’s the end of my world as I know it, and I feel fine

Six o’clock, homework hour, don’t get caught with no power

Crash and burn, return, listen to yourself learn

Shove him in a locker, book learning, go-getting

Every project escalate, self-esteem incinerate

There’s no paper, only iPads, step down, step down

Here’s a new assignment, uh oh

This means late nights, new heights, anxiety and wrongs and rights

A  tournament, a tournament, a tournament, DI

Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline

It’s the end of my world as I know it (I had some time alone)

It’s the end of my world as I know it (I had some time alone)

It’s the end of my world as I know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone)

I feel fine (I feel fine)

It’s the end of my world as I  know it (time I had some time alone)

It’s the end of my world as I know it (time I had some time alone)

It’s the end of my world as I know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone)

The other night I drifted off, too tired to stay awake

Quiet! teachers yell, listen to Ms. Maxwell

Ms. Willemse, Mr. Hughes and Mr. Gross

Down a big road, big hill, no more woods, boom

You symbiotic, chaotic, sleep but no, right, right

It’s the end of my world as I know it (time I had some time alone)

It’s the end of my world as I know it (time I had some time alone)

It’s the end of my world as I know it and I feel fine (time I had some time alone)

So… yeah.

Sorry, that was kind of long. It just boosted my word count by like 400 words.

Anyways. Next step.

The next step was to sing the song. Possibly the worst part of this entire project, not going to lie. Especially the peer critique part. Bleh.

So let’s just skip ahead, shall we?

It was time for the moment we’d all been waiting for. We found out our groups.

Yes. We had groups.

We combined our individual lyrics with those of our group members to form a mega-song. I was put with Quinn and Amy. We worked pretty well together, despite some initial friendly teasing and bickering. After combining our lyrics, we started to record the song using GarageBand.

And then I got sick and missed 3 days of school.

And then I got better, and at the last minute we hunkered down in some obscure supply closet in the library to finish the recording. We also each sent in photos of ourselves in the past and present to complete the video.

Here is our final product for your viewing pleasure.

Lovely.

So that leads us back to this blog post.

Ultimately, every project does.

I hope that I have managed to answer the driving question in here. A lot of the time I forget that that is the point of this blog, because I’m so caught up with “telling a story” and adding media and whatnot. Hopefully I’ve done at least a mediocre job.

And on that note, we will conclude this thing. Check another post off the list.

Cheers,

Evelyn 👩🏽