My Own Curriculum

My Own Curriculum

I was attending school at the University of Oregon with the aid of the G.I. Bill and I recently came to the conclusion that teaching was not going to work out for me. I had no clue as to what else I could or wanted to do. I may have become disillusioned with our government but I still wanted to do something where I could feel like I was making a positive difference in the world. I had no idea how or what that could be while making a livable income in the process. I was kinda working on some sort of a degree, but I had not been fully engaged in my studies. Except for that one year at Hudson Valley, I'd never been a great student. If I was interested in something I learned it easily and well, but many of the courses I took or was supposed to take to satisfy the necessary requirements to earn a degree were not very interesting to me. I found myself only putting in enough effort to make sure I passed those classes to keep those G.I. Bill checks rolling in. I had been much more engaged in my activities at Laurel Hill than my regular classes. My past history told me I needed to be interested in the subject and that I consistently did better in classes that had a good instructor and challenged me. Since I didn't have a major I decided to pick classes based on interest and quality of the instructor. I decided not to worry about requirements or working towards a particular degree for awhile. I did a little research to find out who the best teachers were and then attempted to enroll in their classes. Often, I would need a story to get in. Sometimes I had to say the class was in my major and sometimes I had to convince the person at the registration table that I met the required prerequisites. Surprisingly, most of the time I was able to register for pretty much any class I wanted. I took a very diverse set of classes with a heavy emphasis in philosophy and math. Some of the classes I took had titles like: “Home Made Houses”, “Social Relationships Between Blacks and Whites”, “Drawing”, Music Literature”, “Statistical Theory”, “Theory of Calculus”, “Fundamental and Interpretative Communication”, “Common and Useful Plants”, “International Dancing”, “Food Quality and the Environment”, “John Fahey Guitar”, and “International Law”. This method resulted in my taking a few more classes to achieve a B.A. Degree than most. The minimum semester credits required for graduation was around 120 and was about the number of credits most earned following the prescribed guidelines. Following my own directionless curriculum path I ended up with over 160. Below are some thoughts on three of those classes from which I feel I learned something of value.

Home Made Houses: This class was off campus and consisted of repairing homes in the community for low income families. Some of the projects I worked on included repairing and strengthening the foundation of a home, building a fence, and repairing and re-building the backside of an older couple's home. I became friendly with the guy who ran the program. He had a deal with Sears who supplied all the tools that were needed. As the head of the organization Sears gave him a 33% discount on any tools he wished to purchase for himself. He passed that along to me and I ended up getting a bunch of tools, many of which I still have today. A side project he did was build a custom single bed for one of the families. I helped him with it one afternoon. The bed was built to be 4&1/2 feet above the ground, I don't recall why. A year or two later the family who he built the bed for moved and no longer needed it so they returned it to him. Although I was no longer in town we had kept in touch. He didn't want it so he offered it to me. I was living in San Francisco and had been sleeping on a futon on the floor. The first chance I got I headed up to Eugene and brought the bed back to SF and I used it as my bed for a number of years. It was a great bed and it had all that space under it to put things, like all my records and my stereo. My dog Nyshia adopted it as her sleeping area. I learned a lot in that class as I had never really participated in building anything before. And of course there was the bonus of coming away with a good set of tools not to mention the bed!

Fundamental Interpretative Communication: In this class we were asked to pick someone, a friend or family member, who we currently had either a conflict with or would like to improve our relationship/communication with. I didn't really have anyone I felt like I was struggling with but then I thought of my roommate Mariah. We got along well but we seemed to have a rather combative relationship. It was not uncommon for us to raise our voices at each other. Heck, one time when I was in the kitchen and had just taken a gulp of water Mariah came in and started complaining to me about something and got right up in my face. She was blah, blah blahing about how I should be doing something or other and I still had my mouth full of water. The next thing I know I had released all that water right on her face. It stopped her cold and all I could do was laugh. Anyway, Mariah, unbeknownst to her, became my test case. I started making a real effort to be nicer to her. The more I tried to be nice to her the more leery she became of me and the more strained our friendship became. I soon gave it up and I'm not sure we ever got back to where we had been. It seemed all Mariah's relationships had an element of combativeness to them, especially with men. Looking back I think our more confrontational banter was more a sign of affection and when I changed my behavior it came across more as an insult or maybe a lack of respect. In any case, it changed our relationship and not in a good way. My project for the class was a failure and I received a mediocre grade but I learned something of value. Unfortunately it came with a cost.

International Law: This is my all time favorite class and it was the hardest class for me to get into as I had not taken any of the typical pre-requisite classes. It was designed to be a pre-law class or a graduate class for Poli-Sci majors. Since the requirements for Law School were pretty generic I was able to squeeze in by indicating that I was looking to apply to Law School once I graduated and that I was in my senior year. I was a senior, in fact I would be graduating at the end of the term, and although I had thought about law school, I was never very serious about it. They let me into the class. The instructor for my International Law class was not just brilliant, he gave fascinating lectures. He was frequently solicited by countries to write briefs or arguments for their World Court cases and he had many stories. He told us how one time he ended up writing arguments for both sides. Sort of a guaranteed win as well as a guaranteed loss! All our assignments were to take a side on a current world situation, from a list he provided and write a brief/argument to present to The World Court supporting the side we chose. Researching all the relevant laws and treaties of the countries involved as well as searching for like kind cases for precedents to support my argument was quite time consuming, but it was interesting. Having none of the standard prerequisites for the class, a number of my classmates were curious about how I managed to get in but I did well and could have done better if I hadn't blown the final. I had one of the highest grades going into the final, a solid A, but my C+ on the final knocked me back to a B+. Our final was on a recent international incident. So recent there were still articles about it in the papers. A Korean commercial jet had flown over Soviet air space in April of 1978. The Russians fired on the plane forcing it to land. We had to pick a side and prepare a argument. I went into the issue fully convinced that Russia was in the wrong so I wrote an argument for Korea. It was the only brief I wrote where I was personally invested in one side prior to doing the research. This ended up blinding me. It seemed so obvious to me that Russia was in the wrong that it didn't take much for me to believe I had made a full and sound argument for the Korean side. Looking back I would have done better writing for Russia. Then I would have made a stronger argument as I would have been forced do the thorough research I had neglected to do. I may have only earned a C+ on that but it's the exercise that I learned the most on. I learned, on a personal level, how easy it is to be prejudiced and how that can blind me to fully seeing an issue. Of course that learning came largely after I received my grade. In the end all the learning I did on the cases I did very well on, getting A's, turned out to be of less value than what I learned from the final I got a C on.

School, in theory anyway, is about learning. I learned something of value but essentially failed on my project for the Communication class and in the International Law class I learned the most from the paper I received the lowest grade on. I have found it true I learn more from failure than from success. Hmm... does that imply that if I really wanted the best education I should have failed more?