The Beginning of Change…Hopefully
I can still recall the day that I first laid eyes on its imperfect splendor. As the opened it for the first time to begin my journey on the Manor Farm, I remember being extremely cautious. Like holding a newborn child, I slowly turned every page and cringed when I heard its spine crack. Although the story that this novel had to tell was intriguing and the book basically became an old wise man to me, I didn’t see myself evolve academically or intellectually.
Personally, the Classic Novel Study was simply just another English assignment that was thrown in front of us and mindlessly completed. We’re enriched students in Grade 11. We’ve done these a million times and it has gotten to the point where we write and reflect on our independent studies in a robot-like fashion. I’m aware that we must learn how to analyse text and write responses on our findings. This has been part of the curriculum since the first day we walked into kindergarten. The issue for me is that we don’t get to unleash our fun, creative sides in the process, or at least not with ease. In fact, the only fun I’ve had during this entire project was reading the book and writing a cheesy metaphor in which I call my book an old friend/mentor. Either that makes this a very dry assignment or I need a mental evaluation!
Although I’ve been bashing this study, I did begin to understand a lot about myself as a learner. Through the reading of Animal Farm and the completion of this exhilarating project, I’ve realized that I need to change my approach to being a student. Not to worry, I don’t plan on taking the Dylan Woodley slant on education. I don’t have the raw genius or lazy attitude to be able to pull that off. Instead, I must learn to plan and, more importantly, make better use of my time.
For every due date, I worked late the night before it was to be handed in to get it completed on time. In fact, I sit on my couch at home now crafting this insightful personal reflection with exactly 51 minutes remaining until this post must be prepared and posted on my blog. Although I’ve been lucky thus far with this technique (not just in this study, but also throughout my educational career), I need to attack projects earlier in order to relieve my stress levels and ensure that work can be handed in at its best. Done are the days of writing a sentence and then watching an hour’s worth of Epic Meal Time, Smosh and Ray William Johnson. Finished are the days of sitting down at the computer to complete a project, just to find myself playing Amazing Sherriff on Miniclip two minutes later. And terminated are the days of looking at that daunting list in my planner and doing nothing productive about it.
The future is only going to get more difficult and this strategy will one day no longer work. The balancing act between school, sports, work, family and friends will only get more complex as I become older. Rushed projects, late nights and high stress levels can no longer exist for me. Like the animals on the Manor Farm, I must rise up against the dictating, deceptive and greedy pigs that are distracting and controlling my life in order to change and make it better. I guess I just have to hope that, unlike the naïve creatures on the farm, I realize that life that I am leading is not the life that I want or had any intent on living. If not, I’ll just end up like my copy of George Orwell’s Animal Farm: worn out, beaten up and stuck on a shelf somewhere. Except, for me, it won’t be a shelf at all, merely a six by eight foot dark room on the top floor of psychiatric hospital.
