ProjectED: A few notes

Our core question: how does one redefine education?

• Getting away from the INSTITUTIONAL (occupation/commodity) definition in favor of a PERSONAL (intuitive/process) definition


• Recognizing that you DO learn every day, so you might as well harness that process


• Classes/formal education as good for a craft, providing temporal discipline, and a like-minded community but once you're an adult, you gotta dig in yourself.


• Internalizing education to fight internal chaos,


• Why is it that immigrant cultures in the US really value education, and once it becomes comfortable, we feel shackled by the process?
• Separating EDUCATION from the CLASSROOM. Power and flexibility

Limits -- embrace, fight, and recognize them; more often than not, they're the things that shape your life and learning

Our main escape reflex: Lifting the limits ("I'd be wealthy and travel. I'd write novels. I'd sit around and smoke hash all day.")

Ideas - "Use 'em or lose 'em"

Structure of education

Graduate school as refuge -- getting away from the real world; providing a convenient explanation of your personal worth; professional schools as colossal failures of imagination

Walls of discipline and/or specialization

Formal definitions, formal education

Process -- lecture, testing, questioning, dialogue

Improvisation -- being able to use everything you've got at any time -- without paralyzing yourself in the process ("I can't write… I'm not a writer…")

Only using the formal definitions of an occupation when it HELPS you -- don't screw yourself with barriers that might not apply.

Receding horizon of knowledge (You'll never know what you envision yourself knowing; a degree won't enlighten you, done right, it'll give you a little bit of discipline on HOW to learn)

Personal Education vs. Institutional (formal) education

Beware the Schtick -- once you have a stock answer for your life ("I'm in law school. I'm in film school.") then start to examine the content of that pat answer

The Quiver -- Using the tools that you have; even those that don't fit into the formal definition of your chosen profession (I'm a writer who's done some work in graphic design and the web, I also

Use the Resume -- forget the line items and present yourself as a functional entity; work on it when you're feeling GOOD about yourself and not only during times of crisis

Degree Trajectory -- you should realize that you don't really NEED a degree right about the time you're within striking distance

Learning is constant and often painful, but godDAMN it can be fun

Formal education as isolation (from the world, from questions, from doubt)

If you're using school as an escape, then once the

"School" as simultaneously infantalized and lionized -- "carefree/childlike" and "in pursuit of knowledge"-- schizo

Much of life is luck and "turn on a dime" circumstance. Be ready to recognize it and use it.

Structure of the academy -- disciplines with highly evolved hazing practices, jargon factories with no real guarantees