Fin.

Is it really that time of year already? That time of year when everyone starts to freak out about finals and maybe a bit about summer (and for the overachievers, about the next year). Ah, it's quite a bittersweet thing- growing up is. Part of us wants to be big, responsible adults, while another part wants to kick back as a little kid, with nothing in the world to worry about beside that Math quiz.

That time when everyone is wrapping up again is a good time to look back. It's recent enough that the turmoil and chaos of sophomore year are just about winding down, but not yet fading. As I look back, I see a very different person. In the beginning of the year, I was simply an "overgrown freshman" (in the words of the esteemed Lucas Sokolsky), with freshman-ey perspectives and outlooks, and that hint of naivette left as vestiges of the middle school days gone by. A hundred and a few score days of school later, there has been a transformation- a refinement, an aging (like a fine wine, if I do say so myself. Har har).

A good part of this growth in my personal awesomeness (Hah.) can be attributed to the blog. The casual, freeform nature of a blog allows for a more relaxed, "fun" writing style than homework written in "essay" voice. As such, I also have free reign to experiment with different writing styles and techniques in a relatively low-penalty environment (if I were to do this in, say, one of the very few essays given by most teachers, I would be...erm, in a sad place). Furthermore, there is something magical about writing something on the internet for a large audience of both peers and teachers, as opposed to the singular teacher who reads an essay. What can I say, I like attention.

Bringing it down to Earth a bit, I'd have to say that the most important thing I've learned this year is to be able to take information and interconnect it with other seemingly unrelated information. It has allowed me to take my thinking "out of the box", to be cliche. In previous History classes, or just previous classes in general, facts were of largest importance. World Religions, especially, is a larger perpetrator of this crime. Each test/quiz involved memorizing a glut of random facts about a religion (the name of a ritual, the meaning of an architectural feature, etcetera), which did not help in my endeavor to see the big picture. Thankfully, with the blog posts this year, analysis and drawing upon knowledge have allowed me to unconsciously make connections between informations (Yeah, I just made up a word. See, you can do stuff like this on a blog. Not in an essay.)

Overall, I think the more casual, less high-tension atmosphere of this class has been very conducive to learning to think differently. A high-tension, high stakes class causes most students to retreat to the common and the familiar in order to play it safe and maintain a good grade.

I'll miss this class.
Here's to one last post.

Kevin Y. Ji out.