"Better late than ever" - This is the motto one of my first year undergrads chose for his wiki page in the project started this semester. He meant it as an ironical reminder that,
yes, he managed to catch up with the missed/skipped classes,
yes, his assignments were late but
we should all be happy and stop moaning because
yes, he managed to do it! Wow! Cool!
It is too early for conclusions regarding the project. There are yet questions to be answered - questionnaires, interviews and my own reflections as noted in a modest "campaign diary"...
Still, my student's motto sadly illustrates young Romanians' plight on the road to a belated modernity - a mixture of their inability to cope with academic requirements on their own (most likely residual effects of an overprotective/ authoritarian educational environment) and the desire to save face derived, I would assume, from either a long-lasting tradition of "I-have-to-preserve-my-dignity-no-matter-what" or a sudden awakening to the real world that, good God, hasn't waited for us, hurry up, time's running out, please wait for usssssss!!!
Bitter joke apart, I believe that the most important gain of this project is that
yes, I managed to put up wikis and organise them for my classes,
yes, the project failed along most dimensions but
we should be happy and stop moaning because
yes, I sort of found a way back to my real world students,
I can look them in the eyes with a renewed sense of joy -
Here we are, admitting failure, learning from our mistakes
that a step-by-step approach is better than working in fits and starts
that "the New" should not be a scary movie with dark characters,
and,
hopefully, this will add to the other foundation blocks we all need in
our personal and professional development.
(yes, you've heard well, I said "we" - there's no doubt that one of the greatest satisfactions
is to learn together with/ from one's students)
