Ep 230: Marley on Studies, Reflections, and Self-Inquiry

Akilah Richards 0:00

Audio by raising free people network. Fair of the free child is a weekly published podcast community centering black people, native indigenous people, and people of color and liberatory Living and Learning practices through the portal of unschooling and the self directed education movement. I Akilah Richards and guests speak to and listen for the liberty of moving from schoolish to self determined within ourselves, in our homes, and in how we become and raise free people.

Amayah P. 0:41

You can't keep using tools of oppression and expect to raise free people.

Akilah Richards 0:55

Peace and love the show notes page that will be filled with links to all the things that Miley mentions in this episode will be at raising free people comm forward slash 230 raising free people.com forward slash 230. Now we want to start this episode off with some more gratitude because you know, that's our language over here. And this time, it's to thank all the folks who donated dollars in particular for the translation of raising free people book into espanol. All right, so Denene, Sara, Jonie, the Peabody-Nhem family, Priscilla, Raquel, Ieishah, Angela Tracy, Danica, Susan, Marimer, Itiel, Rachel Mari, Ana Maria, Erin, Yanira, Leslie of Latinx Parenting, Jamie, Teri, Keri, Rehka, and Mercer. Thank you all so much for donating your dollars to this. It worked. We did it is happening. And I appreciate you for making sure that it got done much love y'all.

Marley 2:20

Hi, friends. Welcome to the seventh season affair of the free child. It's Marley here. And I'm really excited to bring in this new era, it's going to be a me centric episode today, I'm going to be discussing subjects Sprint's which is this little concoction that I made up and spoke about back in Episode 193. And the responses were just really interested and really positive. So I'm gonna go more into detail with what I did, why I did it, how it helped me out how stressful it was, probably, and just finding the little gems of information and all of that.

Marley 3:10

So I came up with this whole idea. around September or October of 2020, I was feeling super out of touch with the things I was studying at the time, despite being so into them, you know, they're subjects that I really cared and continue to care about. But I was very much feeling like I wasn't getting what I wanted to get out of it. And so that frustration just drove me to do something that I think I've only ever done once before. Back in heartwood, there was a little college preparation curriculum that the facilitators and my parents worked together to make. And at the time, I do not know if i was i don't think i had the tools for it. It was just a very bad experience for me. But I think, in retrospect, I saw the value in it because I pulled from it a lot into doing the subject sprint, so it was very much a decision made out of emotion. And that is why I don't quite remember how I got to this point. I didn't sit down and be like, Alright, I'm gonna make something so I don't feel less bored. I think I was sitting there feeling bored one day, and I just started writing. I think it'll really help contextualize things. If I give a description of my subjects sprint. So I'm just gonna read the little blurb that I put at the top of my Google Doc for this whole thing. Each semester, I will choose one subject to study. one semester is 14. days with three to four days per week of focus study for one to two hours, subjects will be studied mainly through Crash Course and Skillshare. Though finding content outside of the curriculum is encouraged, at the end of the semester, I will be required to create a piece of media showcasing my learnings, I must also write a reflection on the topic, including my methods of study, and likes and dislikes of the subject. The semester is not complete until my reflection is complete. I'm not required to interact with the topic any further once the semester is over.

Marley 5:37

So looking back at this, I have to be honest, I'm just so proud of myself. On this, I can see the little bits and pieces where I knew that if I didn't put up a sort of barrier, I would try to wiggle my way out of it, I can see the places where I really stretched my capacity to stick with something. And I'm really happy looking at it. Now I know that, for example, writing my media presentations was a super difficult thing to do. Because I was so interested in the topic, I just had so many ideas before I even got around to my Crash Course my skill share my whatever, I just I had so many things to write for. And so the skill of condensing and picking something and really leaning in on that was something that I had to exercise a lot during my semesters. And I don't think I would have learned to do it. Or even, I don't think I would have recognized it as a weakness that I had, at the time had I not done the subject sprint. Another thing that jumps out at me is doing my reflections. I remember how difficult those were for me, because during my study periods, I was so interested that I wasn't really thinking about how I was learning the thing. And so when I had to write about my methods of study, and how I felt studying for two hours on this day, and one hour on that day, the answer for a really long time was just like, I don't know, I was studying, I was doing something, but it was so so crucial that I be able to focus on when my interest in something would start to wane. Or when I would feel that kind of tendency for perfectionism that I have coming in, all of those notes that I could make for myself came in in the reflections. And so without it, I definitely think it would have been a less enriching experience, I now have gained a deeper understanding of what studying really feels like. And I say studying as a really broad term, because I dance and so studying dance is a lot different than studying say government, which is what I studied for my first subjects sprint. I think dance is a bit more intuitive in the sense that when you're watching someone else's choreography, for example, you can tell when you're not following along with that you can look in a mirror and see where your arm is at, see where your head is that and fix accordingly for studying. There is no right or wrong way to do it. You just have to cycle through all the different kinds and be able to identify even when you're studying in a different way than you normally would. And that was not an insight that I had prior I thought for me studying was just like you read. And then you take some notes. And then you kind of rewrite the notes to show that you understand what you read. But there's so many moving parts and the subject Sprint's and the reflections definitely helped me understand those more and more.

Marley 9:13

Following up on the idea of my reflections and how I study, my idea of productivity, pre and post subjects sprint, vastly different. It's something that I think about a lot as well and from what I've heard a lot of adults still discuss and have trouble with thinking about what productivity means to them. I was so sure that productivity meant you have a certain amount of words in your essay, or you've checked a certain amount of things I've your checklist and the value of quantity, the value of the quantity of things that you're doing is very little in comparison to the Quality of those things. And I know, for me, I had to really have that. Look at it. In my subject sprint, I had to be able to see the difference in my media showcases from when I was just trying to bullshit it because I didn't really know what was going on. Or when I was really focused on one thing, because that's what stood out to me those kinds of differences in the result of a different definition of productivity. Yo, yeah, I'm still reworking and recalibrating what it means to be productive. And that giving yourself busy work is not, it's a waste of time, it's called busy work for a reason. And I'm still dealing with all that. Doing the subject sprints for topics that I was already interested in, was probably one of the smartest decisions that I could have made. It forced me to really condense my thoughts and learn how to pick and choose from a really large medium in a way that I would not have had to do otherwise. And it gave me a level of fulfillment and confidence in the subject that I don't think I would have had access to otherwise. So for example, one of my subjects Sprint's was on film and cinematography, that is one of if not my favorite subject to talk about. And I had so much trouble deciding what aspect of it I was going to talk about was I going to talk about costume design was I going to talk about lighting, was going to talk about the gazes that exist in narratives. And I had to pick one, and really go in with that, and not feel like a fear of missing out for not getting to discuss the other ones, because that would only take away from being able to show off my passion for what I wanted to discuss. So I had so much trouble with this sort of all or nothing thinking of like, well, if this is what my essay is on, or this is what my discussion is going to be, I'm never gonna get to talk about the other stuff ever. And I had to stop those kinds of thoughts in their tracks and go back and focus on what I was trying to write, but also remind myself that this is just one moment, this is just one semester. And you're not required to interact with the topic afterwards. But you know, you're gonna, and so there's no reason to put all of your it fish in one barrel, it's not to put, there's no reason to put everything into this one essay into this one showcase, you'll always have more time. But the thing that you're deciding to do, you have to give it your all. And that has to be a conscious and consistent choice. And that memory, that knowledge has been so helpful, especially as I start learning new things as I start having new interest, being able to apply that sort of focus. And really, it feels like a level of confidence. So being able to apply that kind of confidence has made all the difference in my output. So even though there were so many pros to my subject spreads, they eventually came to an end. I think it was for a lot of different reasons. But I know one of the main ones that I wrote about was feeling pressure to make my reflections. Perfect. And I talked about this just a second ago, but I really felt like

Marley 14:07

it had to be on point every time because if it wasn't good, then how can you show that you actually know what you're talking about and that I didn't have the tools back then to combat that long term. I could do it I ended up doing about three semesters of subjects sprints before it fell off. And I think that was a solid amount because any more and I would have been in a really different place than I ended up but the choice fatigue of there being so many websites and so many videos to choose from and so many pictures I could use to illustrate my points. I wasn't prepared for that. So I stopped about three months after starting my subject Sprint's back and said September October. That does not however, mean that I'm not still using a lot of the things that I got from it even more so than the skills that I learned. I've also taken the formatting of a subject sprint, and sort of modernized it and updated it to my needs and goals now. So now I have an extended daily task list. It's self explanatory, it's a list of things that I do, it's a really long list. And they range from cleaning, to taking Korean lessons. And I think a lot of the intensity, that the subject sprint brought me just being in the zone for like one to two hours, I carried that over into my daily task list. So even if my task is sweeping, like downstairs, I'm still listening to something while sweeping downstairs, and I'm like, this is it, this is, this is what I'm here to do. And reframing of being able to do something, while also focusing on something else, and really feeling like I'm getting something from it, that sort of mindful work, where I actually feel a kind of productivity that's quality, over quantity, feeling that hasn't been super transformative and helpful. I'm also now in different spaces. I think part of the reason that subjects sprint led to this mini burnout was that I wasn't in a lot of spaces, exploring these interests at the time, I was very much keeping to myself, with my essays, I didn't even really make comments that much. Now, I'm broadening my access to different opinions and methods of communicating those opinions as well. All of those communities are making it feel less like it's me in search of the truth of the information and more so like a constant progression and a constant walking towards learning more and picking up things on the way the infinite way the infinite walk. That sort of constant progression and constant learning is now something that I can look forward to and be more mindful of instead of feeling very passive about my studying and my whole educational process. So that was just me talking about my subject Sprint's starting them, how they helped me out. And I hope that it's really insightful for anyone else I know one of my favorite things is to just write down a bunch of shit that I want to learn. And sometimes it's hard to structure that in a way that seems sustainable, so maybe subject Sprint's will help you sort of create your own curriculum for sustainably learning things. If you found any of this helpful, I do want to mention that I will be doing mentoring sessions one on one, and be sort of ideas and these sort of themes of progression of education and battling perfectionism, all things that I'm really happy to talk about with any of you. So the link for my mentoring and viewing more information on that will be on the show notes page. You can find that at raising free people.com forward slash 230 thank you so much for spending your time with me today. And I can't wait to read your comments.