Thursday, May 5, 2011

School Project Experiences

Relating to my history ISP topics, I really think that it is interesting that throughout the highschool years, everyone would have such different experiences and would learn such different things from their projects. For example, for my English ISP, everyone had to choose a different book to write an essay on, and everyone's experience was different because we all chose different books and took different approaches.

What's more interesting to me, however, is the fact that a lot of times our experiences can change drastically just because of one little thing/event. For example, for my English ISP, I was originally going to choose Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, but because it got chosen by another student, I chose Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury instead. If I had decided my ISP book earlier, I would have written an essay on Flowers for Algernon and I probably would not have thought about Fahrenheit 451 as much as I actually did, assuming that I was going to read Fahrenheit 451 anyway. This is the same for my history project. Had partner J. not been so ardent about doing the topic about Canada and peace keeping, my group would have just stuck with the topic about Canada-America relations. To me it is just fascinating how one's high-school experiences can be dependent on these seemingly unimportant things.

This lets me have more beliefs in fate. Was it really just coincidence that I decided to choose Fahrenheit 451 for my English class? Or was there a higher power that had long decided that I shall do my English ISP on Fahrenheit 451? And what would have been different if I have chosen Flowers for Algernon?I do not know the answers to these questions at all. What I do know, however, is that my English ISP turned out to be successful, that I actually learned quite a lot of things from it, and that I would always have this special connection with Fahrenheit 451.