Camilla's Portfolio

Gerbin4

Creative Learner

The creative learner tasks were some of the more enjoyable ones. There were two creative writing tasks and I did them with minimal effort. That being said, though I used less thought, I used just as much time as many others did. These tasks are inhibiting my creativity rather than letting me show them. Not only that, but it is also figuratively making my brain turn to mush. Instead of letting me practice my math and work on my science, I have to work on these tasks that are just so awfully boring. As an art teacher, [IF], you should know that creativity should not be confined to these mundane tasks. Creativity should be freed and unshackled. These tasks are tying down our creativity. I would try to state some positives and negatives of this task, but unfortunately, there are no positives to be found. These tasks are in no way creative, and I do not believe that these tasks were written by our teachers because they lack all human emotion and creativity.  

Critical Thinker

The tasks I did were 13, 10, and 9. I tried, in vain, to find a comparatively fun task. Even though they were all quite boring, the least dull of them all was the one in which I could identify an ‘outlandish’ idea to share with my advisor. Though I wanted to talk about ending the apprenticeship reflections, it would be petty of me to do so. I can wholeheartedly say that I wasted my time doing these tasks. I am further wasting my time writing these equally un-intellectually stimulating tasks. If I could measure my brain activity, my brainwaves might show me as ‘deceased’ in this class. If it even deserves to be called a class. Classes are supposed to be stimulating and should introduce us to new things, so we can critically think about our learnings. This class is making us critically bored, if anything, rather than critically thinking. I believe that this is wasting my remaining eyesight as well as my energy that could go to other things, such as my science work, my math problems, my Chinese writing, my language arts reading, my PE stamina, and the next task.  

Resilient

My favorite resilience task was 18, since it gave me a chance to connect with my inner self. I have found that I do not like my inner self very much. There were also many flaws in the website, since it can never measure honestly correctly. A truly honest person will have high honesty, but so will people who lie about their honesty. Those who have low honesty did not lie about their dishonesty. Finding these holes took more critical thinking than the critical thinking tasks. Resilience cannot be practiced like this. However, many of my classmates practiced true resilience by boycotting these tasks. Facing detention and scary IFs, including our principal, they stood strong like true fighters and trees. Unfortunately, like trees, they were cut down by our oppressors. Thankfully, our pleas were heard, and we didn’t have to do as many mundane tasks as before. On an unrelated note, after the change, my math grades improved. This may or may not have been a coincidence, because I may or may not have spent more time studying in learning lab afterwards.  

Effective Collaborator

The task I remember best is task 3. I did a one-man play in front of my parents, and I will never do it again. I despised the process and hated the performing. I did not collaborate while completing any of the tasks, save the one where [quack 1] and [quack 2] were debating and I was the moderator. Their exchange gave me quite a headache. Not only were none of the tasks asking me to collaborate, but the only collaboration I have done in learning lab was the boycotting of the apprenticeship tasks. False collaboration often gives the illusion of teamwork without any real substance or shared effort. It’s frustrating when tasks labeled as “collaborative” end up being dominated by one or two people, leaving the rest to just hover. In these situations, true collaboration is lost. This “teamwork” not only drags down personal growth but also undermines the actual goals of a project. Ultimately, false collaboration becomes an exercise in going through the motions rather than fostering genuine cooperation and creativity. These tasks are not helping us collaborate, but are destroying our trust for one another.  

Skillful Communicator

The skillful communicator tasks were more creative than that of the creative learner. However, they were just as mundane as the others, just more creatively. They had the ability to make talking to your classmates and family the most awkward, unenjoyable experience. Even for people who did public speaking, it was difficult to make it enjoyable. These mundane tasks made it so that the students had to repeat worthless actions over and over to achieve a goal; making it so that we would be perfect robots for the workforce. However, we aim to be the CEOs and leaders rather than the workers, so rather than forcing us to lower our imagination and inhibit our freedom to express ourselves in an American school, we should learn to be the leaders. In other classes, we learn to be the starters of conversation, the first one to share in class with the pressure of getting an answer wrong. In this class, we become robots, and AI can do so much better than we can. Learning lab should be about learning rather than busy work, where we can, and will, use artificial intelligence to do our tasks.