Much End. Much Reflection.

This blog post is the last thing standing between me and a Thursday where I've told myself I don't have to do anything except sleep. So the urge to scribble something down and go play a board game is strong.

But while this blog post will not be the next Great American Novel, I would like to put some thought into it because 20.109 is a class that I have truly enjoyed and merits reflection.

To a degree, working because I want to has been a theme throughout 20.109. In general, I pick classes because I think the subjects sound like interesting things to learn (or are required for a course 20 major which I think sounds cool). I actually learn the subject material because of graded classwork - be it projects, psets, or tests. I like good grades. I do not deny that they are motivational. Particularly when I have 5 interesting classes and a campus full of amazing people to goof off with. With 20.109, however, it wasn't just the grades motivating me to rescue my focus from the depths of the internet and put some effort into an assignment. Grades still helped. Sorry un-graded lab notebook entries :´(, but when I worked on something I knew some really amazing people would be giving the grades. The 20.109 staff is made up of some truly brilliant and kind people. It's not so much that I was worried about disappointing you guys, or even simply trying to impress, it's that I knew each assignment would be valued. Thought went into picking out homework (and working on pre-project parts really did help) and thought went into grading assignments. I got to know the 20.109 teachers much more than I normally get to know my professors and I felt like they got to know me too. Assignments had faces associated with them on both sides. I knew the teachers were putting in effort so I wanted to return the favor.

I got to know some classmates, too, which was cool :) During our first journal club, someone (sorry I can't remember who. people are hard. see rest of paragraph) introduced themselves and then said something along the lines of, "You guys should really know my name already." I did. Kinda. But it reminded me to pay attention to the next week's round of presentations because there were two other classmates who's names I didn't know... 2 out of 8... But I learned their names and had some nice conversations with them! I definitely got to know 109ers better than I have people from any class since freshman year. I'm looking forward to having class with y'all again :)