California, Washington and Oregon are on fire, BLM protesters forge ahead despite lessening media attention while anti-mask protests steal the spotlight and we still find ourselves in the middle of a global pandemic.  Throughout all of this, there has been a push on social media to be productive, as though its some personal failure if you come out the other side of all this without having learned a new language, written a book and produced your greatest artistic masterpiece.

 

If you have been able to do any or all of those things then I applaud you.  I don’t mean to sound cynical because over all, I’ve got it pretty good.  However, I believe that coming to terms with the fact that it’s completely normal to feel overwhelmed right now is a huge step in being able to overcome it.  In all honesty, these first classes have had me confused and out of my depth more often than not.  I generally consider myself to be an educated person who is relatively tech savvy but  with the sheer number of new programs and apps to learn how to use in addition to new information and course material, I sometimes find myself unable to figure out what questions I should even be asking to get the information I need.

 

Admitting to my classmates that I’ve been feeling overwhelmed and discovering that I’m not alone in that has been the first step to breaking things down into manageable tasks.  At the moment I’m still not sure what I want to focus on for my free inquiry project.  I hope that I can find some way to incorporate my love of film and analysis but, at the moment, I’m not really sure I know how to do that, whether it would be possible or if it’s even worthwhile.

 

Jeff Hopkins mentions in his TEDx talk from 2014, that we should be shifting the way that we teach from have student know about something to having them truly know it.  The difference being that something that is known can be recalled and used in everyday life, perhaps several years down the road.  Right at the beginning of the talk he shares a quote, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” and I feel as though that applies to the way that I have been feeling over these last couple weeks.  At this very moment, I feel more like and incredibly full bucket than a sparked fire but as I sit in more classes and participate in more discussions I’m finding that all this new information is becoming more exciting than daunting.

 

Hopefully, as the year progresses, I will continue to settle in and find my groove within this program.  Finishing this first blog post has checked off one more box on an incredibly long to do list and, although there is still a lot to do, I’m happy to say I’m feeling just a little less overwhelmed already.