Senior Year: Independent Study on Neuroscience and Learning technologies
This time next year I'm going to be walking to class.... in college.
And in the next one to three months I have to submit the applications which will determine where and how I'm going to be living for the next four years.
Holy crap.
That is so surreal.
I'm ready to go to college, but there's still so much that I want to accomplish before I do. The only problem that I have to battle against is the dreaded senioritis (a crippling disease that strikes high school seniors. Symptoms include: laziness, an over-excessive wearing of track pants, old athletic shirts, sweatpants, athletic shorts, and sweatshirts).
Interestingly enough, I'm not experiencing many of the symptoms described above. I'm definitely feeling the fatigue settling in once again - staying up late to do homework and stressing about tests is the reason for that. But I can say without a doubt that my motivation has not decreased.
If anything, it's increased because I know that I only have so many more months left to learn all I want to learn.
This applies specifically to my independent study (IS).
Last year, I did an IS in cognitive science with Mr. Heidt, my former Gifted Honors English (GHEnglish) teacher.
It was an illuminating experience. I studied metaphor and linguistics, reading Metaphors We Live By by Lakoff and Johnston and trying to dive deeper into embodied cognition. But what I ultimately learned is how to plan and think strategically.
And how does one plan/think strategically?
By failing to do so, of course.
And I failed. Often.
It was things like overestimating how much work I could do in a given time period, giving myself unreasonable deadlines, and in general overextending myself. This lack of strategic planning resulted in getting backlogged with work.
But because I made those mistakes last year, I can use them to make a better IS this year..
Which brings me to my next point - my senior year independent study!
This year I'm going to be studying neuroscience and learning technologies.
After going to the cognitive science summer school and learning about deep learning, robotics, and various other topics, I became really interested in the brain.
The problem is that I don't really know anything about the brain. What are its structures? Which parts are in control of movement, thought, regulation?
So that's something I want to focus on in this IS - brain structure and function.
That's the neuroscience part. But I also want to get into philosophy of mind, psychology, and education, and how all of those fields connect to neuroscience.
I just have to figure out how I'm going to structure the IS so that I can intertwine those topics successfully. I want to come out with the ability to talk about the brain, how people learn, and why that's important in educaiton.
In order to learn what I want to learn, I'm going to set a few goals for this year's IS.
Create a curriculum for the independent study as a whole and stick to it
Contact and work more closely with mentors
Read more books/resources, discuss their significance with Mr. Heidt, and post analysis/reflections
Meet deadlines
These are just to get me off the ground and keep me on track for the first few months. I'm likely to add more points as the year goes along, but this is enough for now.
I'm going to start with the first point - create a curriculum.
