Up on the Roof Top

There is so much I want to talk about today. It seems that I’ve almost thought more today while not in school. I guess I’ll begin with the most recent event.

We had our first soccer game today. No one knew everyone on the team yet so we tried to learn names and then we took 10 minutes to actually warm up and stretch some because we were trying to sort out uniforms and names the rest of the time. Then we started the game scored in 1.5 minutes. Then 1.5 minutes later it lighting and then lighting 3 times in 10 minutes so 21 of the games were canceled. But I actually touched the ball multiple times which is more then most can say, and we technically won. So YAY!!!!!!

It’s funny how a group of people that doesn’t really know each other, but all have a common goal and experience, can work together to make something happen. My coach calls are team the “good retired girls,” because none of us really care super seriously about soccer, but if we are still all pretty good players. Which also means we have basically no competition at our age since most girls either play club, school, or have quite at this point. However, while we all do lots of other things as well, we still have a ton of fun playing soccer which is why we have the team at all. In school you don’t usually have the option to just do something for fun. It is all about a grade. What if you want to do math or science or English or history just for fun sometimes? What if you want to learn about a topic without any pressure? Such a thing doesn’t really exists for schools. There is no “rec school time”. If it did exists, I would imagine it to look like Nerd Camp. A time where people are participating in learning just for fun without grades or standards holding us back.

I also watched Hercules today. There was one quote that I thought fit really well with design thinking; “Being famous is not the same thing as being a hero.” Design thinking is problem solving for people. The innovative people that come up with these great ideas aren’t acting on problems just to be famous, they want to genuinely help others which is pretty heroic.

(While talking about Disney, today I also discovered that Simba also had a son! I found out that there is a whole series of Lion King books, that now I want to track down.)

This perfectly segues into my new design thinking challenge I have made for myself. During ID a lot of us have talked about wanting to be able to go on the roof at school, and to actually take advantage of all of the space up there. (A lot of us get really bugged with how space is used at school, so we get really annoyed when space is wasted.) Finally after Abigail posted another post about how people were on the roof today at a football game, I wrote this response:

It is official. I think a new goal/challenge for ID is to figure out “HMW be allowed to go on the roof?” When I think of a roof of a school, the first thing I think of is always High School Musical and how the roof has a garden on top that Troy uses as a secret hide out. Why don’t we have a garden on the roof? Why can’t we have a secret hideout to think in? Why can’t we go on the roof? Let’s find out who is in charge of that and make a pitch. I’m going to start a google doc now to draft a pitch to Ms. Parker and I’ll share it with anyone who wants to help get this thing rolling.

I realized today that we were doing the typical student thing again where we would get annoyed with something and talk about it a bunch, but then not act upon our ideas because a teacher didn’t tell us to. Well I have been trying really hard to notice when we are doing thing, and now I think it is time to start taking action. I would also really love to know what your school or workplace does with their roof to get some ideas and pitch points to show what we could be doing with that space.

We don’t really have any assigned homework this weekend because we are going on a retreat tomorrow, but I feel like I have been way more productive this Saturday then normal despite not “having” to do things. I also finally got around to categorizing some of my older posts. I haven’t finished yet, but I’ve gotten close to 30 of the first ones done. I had to reread a lot of the post to remember what they were about, and it was nice to go back an revisit those ideas. It was also cool to see what things I tended to post about. Some of the common themes were about school, nerd camp, design thinking, Disney, Wicked, growing up, perception, and society. A great part about having a blog is that I can have one place to check when I want to go back and look on these old thoughts.