The Spark

--Originally published at TC2027 – Blog will Tear us Apart

First of all, sorry for taking so long on this post. Writing something personal has always been quite difficult for me, but actually that’s what this is about.

This past semester I enrolled in a course about digital security and privacy, a pretty different and unique course. I knew already who was teaching it, so I enrolled well informed of the teacher’s perspective to teaching: Flipped Classrooms.

My experiences with open and flipped classrooms are always fruitful, maybe my habits, personality and mentality fits this style. Being able to discover by my own (with proper guidance) and learn from things in a way that costed me not only reading and search skills, but also the skill to craft and find the right questions, it’s incomparable.

I know school is finite. My days soon will be over, and the skill I value the most is the one I learned from this kind of courses, being autodidact. Sure, the teacher is there, and hell, he was always, always, ALWAYS, watching. But the freedom was there too, we were told to select from a list of topics and investigate, discuss, ask on twitter, go into the darkest subreddits, and things of such. This allowed me to enjoy and focus on the process and experience of learning, rather than the topic itself.

Sure, I learned about the topic, and I learned a lot. But that depended on me and my own effort. I saw many classmates having trouble deciding what to do without a list of little weekly tasks, and they complained, quite a lot. But let me tell you guys something, the world will never give you a list of activities to do. In a job, they will give you a problem to solve, and your boss will expect you to solve

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Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

--Originally published at Miss F.

Throughout my soon-ending school experience, I always thought that getting good grades was the only way to learn. I hadn’t had trouble with that until 2012, the year I became a University student. My grades dropped, I started failing subjects, my scholarship was reduced and, consequently, I had a personal crisis. It seemed obvious to me that I was becoming a failure and my life would suck forever because I just couldn’t get my average to what I wanted. My brain was going into shock and I couldn’t soak in any knowledge. I can summarize said experience with this song:

Many students believe that their grades define who they are and who they will become. If you have good grades you’ll be successful and get a good job, if they aren’t you suck. Thus, “I Must Impress My Professor” becomes a hymn.

It wasn’t until less than a year ago that I started seeing things differently. I started loving my degree and my subjects, I began feeling happy about myself and what I had accomplished. Who cares about grades when I have so much more to offer? I clearly remember a few months ago when I called my mum and told her “I think I’m finally getting the hang of school”. She laughed and said “Well, better late than never!”. It literally took me 19 years to understand what school was all about, or at least what it should be about.

A huge part of this change of mind I had, I owe to Ken Bauer and every other teacher that focused on helping students learn instead of showing off and acting as a deity. It’s because of you that I understood that everyone has their own learning process and it’s OK to take longer to understand something and it’s OK not

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