As the holiday season approaches it brings with it the ever present "moving date" as I continue to further my education toward profession. Of the last four years, three of the holiday seasons have mean packing my possessions into as few boxes as possible, discerning what is necessary and what can be discarded or donated, how to transport it, and the other wonders that are incorporated with such a move. However, it is at this point, with such a distinct inventory of what one owns, that you realize, as Tyler Durden would have asserted, how much one's possessions own them in turn. While looking the things I discard or donate, I look at them and wonder if I should be doing that. These items, many of them not unearthed in years, bring back essential memories, fondness, trauma, etc. that it seems one forgets in one's routine life. For example: I donated several items of clothing that I should have donated years ago. A few of the items date back to when I was in the early years of high school, approaching the better part of a decade ago now, and were not acceptable to be worn in public at all. However, even as I packed these items away to be donated to those in need, I couldn't help but reminisce on the things that I had cognitively attached to them: My first date, my first cross country race, the first party I attended, my first kiss, and other socially important memories from high school. It seemed to me that for a moment, at least, our lives seemed very compartmentalized.
This perhaps plays upon the writing of a peer regarding his thoughts about flash fiction, as I had just finished reviewing it for him, but seems more likely to be a useful technique for reading analysis and writing in the future. As we begin to get older, it seems we gather more and more things that we essentially do not need, but hold an intrinsic, emotional value for us. Our students, who have not been on the Earth nearly as long as we have, should then have the ability to choose a handful of items to represent their entire life span. For example: If I were to track my life until my sophomore year, when I turned fifteen, I could easily clump my life together into five objects: a cow puppet, a Sonic the Hedgehog stuffed animal, a Gameboy, a bicycle, and a CD Player. Each of these would represent stages of my life that I can remember. (1) The cow puppet is something I still have from when I was a child, (2) the Sonic the Hedgehog stuffed animal was my favorite thing in the early years of my cognitive memories and my favorite game and television show, (3) I spent a good portion of my youth playing games and it only increased during this time, (4) I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was eight years old and it changed my freedom once I did, and (5) the CD player linked me to music and would shape my attitude, decisions, clothing, etc. from the time I was about twelve until I graduated from high school.
As an educator, this could be an interesting way to learn about the students in your classroom. It doesn't necessarily have to be a big project, although in younger years it most certainly could be, and could simply be a list with explanations. Seemingly this would be a great opening assignment for the students to accomplish so that they can learn something about themselves, the instructor can learn something about them, and perhaps their peers could learn something more about them that would cool off some of the highly judgmental airs that come with groups of students. Then the instructor could relate the assignment to the way that most narrative novels are written, as they are usually pieces of a much larger story that the author weaves together to demonstrate the significance of every piece. Seemingly just a thought, and can certainly be bent and shaped to whatever the instructor wants to do with it. Well... back to packing.
Oh, and
Happy Holidays in case I'm not back before then!
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