// explicit language because fuck you
So, what happened?
Honestly, I didn't know what to expect coming into this module. What the fuck is context and why do I have to study it anyways? I heard from some seniors that it was something like, story telling and character creation, but that just made things even weirder.
I came into it pretty blank, "Mr. Dr. Charles seems kinda nice". We were asked to do some basic ice-breaking stuff, but without the "support" of students from other semesters, everyone there was left pretty awkward. The focus of self expression and doing whatever the fuck was "you", was definitely put up front and centre even in the first lesson though. That struck a tone with me, and got me pretty excited for what was next to come.
So the awkwardness never went away, which is kinda a bummer. I do have a couple of theories why, but I'll just leave them in this inconspicuous dropdown to not drag everything else along.
burn out from long hours of school work, creating resistance to invest too much/any energy into anything school related. (last sem was fucked)
inadequate preparations in getting our intake prepared for online schooling, since we're the first ones doing something like that, as well as being completely new to the environment.
since most relationships are bolstered by "distance", the more explicit & non-transparent way of communication online causes imbalances in energy investment to be easier to occur and more pronounced.
the inefficiency of energy investment by lecturers, and their subsequent retraction fuels the "anti-social" behaviour of still-uncomfortable students. (i never thought i'd use "anti-social" unironically, but here we are)
our broken expectations at the start of the semester caused us to not be able to adapt to something still unknown. scrambling to just work around and "survive", things like socializing definitely, gradually fell in priority. (august intake has a discord server where they're actually active in, which is super cool)
Mr. Lord Charles (the Fifth) still tried his best to get us riled up though, and that consistent push definitely contributed to a healthy(-ier) environment.
Other than that, one thing that I thought contributed to the general isolated feel of the sessions, was the "over-empathizing" to students regarding "shyness". I feel like that only enabled it further and decreased the efficiency of information communication for everyone. I'm also not alone in criticizing the breakout room system, but I didn't have a concrete solution on what a better system would be like.
Well now I do, so get ready. In my opinion, a better solution to accommodate students genuinely not able to cope, would be for it to be a semi-private opt-in, rather than vice versa.
What fuck do I mean by that? Something like, there'd be an expectation set in place for students to talk about their work every session, in a group setting. Then, there'd be a "consent" system in place for them to show the work itself. Do note that, the students should also be made very aware that it's okay if they don't have anything to show for a session, just to not peer-pressure and force a "schedule" if they're busy with other work.
I feel like, with this system in place, the sharing will increase the quality of student work by giving directions for all. I also think that it'll decrease bad "competition", while encouraging the healthy variant. This is because, the atmosphere turns into one that shows standards of others' work, instead of one more resembling corporate competitive secrecy. Now, I do understand that some of the topics being written can be sensitive to oneself, and people might be insecure about their writing (I know I definitely am xd), but I think the "talk about it but don't have to show it", system addresses that.
One big thing that needs to be addressed though, is "copying". In previous modules that worked with full transparency, the issue of people yanking concepts and getting credit for it became a big problem (fuck those guys and their pets). I don't think there's a miracle solution for this, but I think with smaller classes, the brute force solution of the lecturer simply remembering, should work well enough.
Well uh, with whatever that was out of the way, now I'd like to talk about what I really learnt from this module.
The most important thing I feel like, is writing with music doesn't fucking work. The second most important thing would be the understanding of myself, of why I'm here, of what the context currently is, and what sequence of events brought me to the current contextual state.
I always adored the thought trains of "why's", and would always spent way too much time drilling deep into subjects that I didn't really understand. This module really helped to blow that side up into its own entity and let me fuck around with it for a few fun months.
The logical segmentation of everything also made it much more easier to "get", instead of relying on "feels". Conveying emotions is challenging on its own; conveying emotions that the other person isn't aware of will always end in catastrophe.
So, overall, the class was lit. Just wished that it was as lit as it could've been.