Through reading selection options, I developed my own personal goals. I think it consolidated many thoughts and concerns that I’d been having through my education school career but hadn’t had the time to explore in depth. I surprised myself with how clear and motivating I found my guiding principles. A broader appreciation of knowledge and expression supports connection.

I also clearly felt my own discomfort in these spaces, like I’d walked in on someone else’s family dinner. I felt that there was something wonderful and special there but at the same time I felt both and urge and push to leave? This isn’t something I fully understand myself, but its strength makes me thinks its something important to explore deeper. Personally, I don’t want to be beholden by an impulse that I don’t understand, trust, or know the source of, especially since it doesn’t seem to be serving any helpful purpose.

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I think I have a blind spot and bias against the ‘unquantifiable’, that if it cannot be measured that it cannot be relied on and is therefore useless. I know conceptually that none of that is true or even accurate, many complicated and human things can be measured and many ‘facts’ are not measured honestly, this is simply a bias I’ve allowed to go unchecked.

In part I think this is defensive, this isn’t a part of myself that I’ve ever explored despite my personal interest because I didn’t feel it was acceptable or valuable to do so. I resented past experiences where, as a student especially, the message was to be creative but the reality was that your options were to slap paint on a pig (colour strict academic product), create a masterpiece taking many hours beyond the scope of the activity which ‘earned’ its right to be assessed as learning, or try and fail receiving comments that this creative endeavor doesn’t actually do what an essay would have done and therefore is useless.

To be frank, looking back, I’m not sure how many of these messages were even explicit or intentional. Maybe my own insecurity in my abilities read to far into the comments I received. Maybe my message was confused regardless of the creative liberties taken. But I sure that no major assessments or learning were done without concrete work shown on loose-leaf.