2.0 Learning/Unlearning
In elementary school I spent my summers up at my grandmother’s cottage. It was in a village called Hancock, Wisconsin. Population: 419. She lived in this big blue house right on the edge of Pine Lake. You stepped out of the car and you could smell pine blended with lake water hanging in the air. It was always so quiet up there; I could hear the sound of me breathing and the crunching of pine needles below my bare feet. I always got so excited to go up there and stay. I liked to pretend that I was a Native American when I would stay at my grandmothers. I would pull seaweed out of the lake and dry it on the pier by hanging it up; I am not sure if I actually ever ate it or just made arts and crafts with it. I vividly remember stalking fish; I would get into the paddleboat, or canoe with my fishing pole and just watch the fish intensely. I always loved fishing and would get so happy when I would catch one that was big enough to serve to the family. I’d go home with it and my grandfather would help me prepare it for dinner and soon I was good enough to do it on my own. That’s something I cherish to this day. I was constantly outside every minute I was there. My grandmother even had a bell on the porch that she would ring when she would want me to return. Other fond memories I have are observing animals, rescuing turtles, and testing the turbidity with my grandmother. My grandparents’ home was a huge learning space for me, coupled with nature and hands on experiences. I learned so much without knowing I was learning and I think that was the intention. It was a place where I could unlearn the life-style of a suburban fast paced life and learn how to cherish moments and our nature. This knowledge all moved on with me at school.
2.1 High School Daze
Middle school was just filled with drama and awkwardness. I don’t think I really need to go into too much detail here because I’m sure you have all experienced that middle-school awkwardness. I will share some of the major moments from that phase in my life. I definitely was seeking a lot of attention from my parents, as they were busy with work and I felt like they weren’t around. This led me to experiment with drugs and alcohol but it never became that serious of an issue. My grandparents also passed away when I was in middle school, which left me pretty heavy with feelings, as they were a big part of my life growing up and taught me a lot. By the end of 8th grade I had established my circle of friends, and surprisingly I still have a few of those friends.
Onto high school, let’s start with freshman year. It was nothing out of the ordinary; I attended Verona Area High School. It was a public high school with about 1,500 students or so. As a freshman you had all your basics: Science, Math, English, and History but the fun with it was you got to choose the specific subcategory you wanted to learn within those basics as well as pick extracurricular classes. My schedule had Spanish, biology, geometry, ceramics, and English/history combo. I wasn’t really focused freshman year, I goofed off quite a lot actually but that dissipated once sophomore year came. I stayed with most of my classes just upgraded to bio 2 and Spanish 2, was able to exchange history for global issues and English for theatre arts.
All throughout high school I was really interested in Science, English, Art and Spanish. Majority of my classes were surrounded by those 4 courses and my grades were showing that I was interested and had the attention for those subjects and I continued on that pathway for the remainder of high school. Senior year came rather quickly; there I was sitting at my desk with an envelope from, the University of Milwaukee, in my hands. It was the moment of truth. What most high school seniors were anxiously awaiting. But I could barely find the courage to open it, I just felt nauseous. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted and high school was coming to an end, roads were diverging and this made it much more real.
I sat there. My hands were shaking and sweating as I slowly started to work my fingers to open the letter. Finally I pulled the letter from the envelope.
2.2 The College Years
I chose to stay in town and attend Madison Area College, also known as the technical college. I decided I was unsure of what my life plan was and didn’t want to waste money. As the year 2008 progressed I was doing exceedingly well in my classes, sociology and earth science were my favorite to attend. I finally started to feel a sense of comfort as understanding what my passions were. So when the summer of 2009 started I arrived at Northland College, which is a small private environmental school in Northern Wisconsin. My emphasis for school was Sustainable Agriculture. I didn’t have much technical experience in that realm it was just something I was passionate about since growing up at the cottage and wanted to focus my attention on. Well, after a semester I was completely overwhelmed. Sitting in a classroom was so difficult and I was paired with all these people who had extensive experience with sustainability. I learned that I couldn’t sit and be talked to without doing something with my hands or my mind wandering somewhere else. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy the content, I loved it, I just couldn’t focus. This led me to discover I needed “living curriculum” or hands on curriculum. I ended up dropping out and moving back to Madison and attending the community college to complete my 2nd year of schooling and that was not one of my better decisions. I was still in this struggling mindset of sitting in a classroom and had no motivation for school at this point. In hindsight, I should have withdrawn from my classes to maintain my GPA but I was in a knot. I needed help but didn’t know how to ask for help and it led me to fail two classes and lower my GPA and that alone had made me terrified to try to even go back to school as GPA’s are imperative to get into most Universities.
2.3 Self Study
Since then, I have participated in a few different self-directed studies. The first being ecology/environmental studies. I lived in California and became very hands on with classes and workshops and eventually landed an internship to become a Naturalist. I also participated in some Early Childhood Education coursework that I completed this last spring in order to get a promotion at work. I have noticed work isn’t something that I have really noted in this OP, so a little bit a bout that… I have a very strong work ethic and have worked since I was about 14. I have mainly worked with children in a variety of settings and I think the influence of working with children stemmed from my mother, as she is a pre-school teacher. There were a few cases of working in retail but it was just a job to make money and it hasn’t been something I continue to pursue. I actually have been actively involved in the lives of our youth and I think it is vital to continue to work with them in a way where they can self-regulate and be immersed in the culture of our environment. Within this career field of education we are required to obtain continuing education hours on our own time through courses, workshops, conferences, and books which all aids my self-studying.