PPP Project — Two Month Update
It’s been interesting and tough.
It has been two months and one week since I started the PPP project.
It’s been a lot of fun — I truly love learning about this stuff, and can’t wait for more. In fact, I feel I’m going way too slow.
Hard? Definitely. I wrote my midterm exam for Intro Psych last week, and failed — my pass grade is 60%, and I got 55. It’s sad, but it is what it is — I’ll retake the exam next month.
What have I done up to now? I completed the Moral Foundations of Politics, a course that can be summed up in two words: brilliantly thought-provoking. Time and time again, my assumptions were questioned — and as I said often in my multiple blog posts, the top lesson was that one can’t wring the politics out of politics. I then got started on MIT’s psych course, which was too dry for me, and around December, I shifted to Yale’s Intro Psych course. That is very enjoyable indeed. I’m still in that course (will finish the syllabus this week, review and write the final exam next week). I’m taking Harvard’s Justice as my second political science course, and completed Learning How To Learn as part psychology, part I-need-help-to-complete-this-project. From the philosophy angle, I completed Know Thyself. Now, I’ve started HOPE, which is part philosophy and part political science.
I began on the 15th of November. For the first month, it went very smoothly. I then took a break for winter — and since then, I haven’t really got back on track. I keep hitting ruts, but while the adventure is painful at times, I think it will be very worthwhile. Anyway, all major projects hit snags after two or three months — when you push on ignoring that, you start getting results.
But what are the results? That’s something I’ve been concerned about — why all this? Is this project just a waste of time? There are two parts to what I want from this degree: the academic side, and the real-world side.
I think I’ve failed miserably in keeping to the real-world side. That’s partly why I started HPCP — to apply my knowledge. This blog is not going too well, though (something I’ll write about soon). I console myself, however, in that so early on, I can’t really use my limited knowledge to come up with opinions.
I decided to stop posting my notes — I was spending too much time to polish them, time which was better off invested in other areas. Why can’t I just publish my notes as they are? Good notes should be deeply personal — they aren’t meant for anybody else. Not only do they contain sensitive information, they are often ununderstandable to the public. If I learn about an exciting topic that I want to share, I speak about it. So I’m relegated to mostly writing about politics in HPCP. Seriously, though — I should tune up the philosophy — it’s much calmer. Too much politics will make anybody crazy.
In these two months, I implemented two “reforms” — documents that changed the project in a fairly significant manner. The first one restructured the first semester, completion requirements — specifically differentiating between minors (short courses like Know Thyself or Learning How To Learn) and majors (full-semester college courses). The second one improved (or attempted to improve) the rigor of the degree, and tightened the syllabus, grading, and tracking. The last week of every month is now dedicated purely to review (I will not be following that this month, as I’ve barely learned anything as it is), the pass mark was raised to 60 (which led to me failing, haha), and detailed ideas on retention were considered.
Retention is a huge area which I’ve got to work on. I can’t allow my old knowledge to seep away. I’ll be posting an update sometime about how that’s going.
Anyway, a third of the first semester is over — here’s to the rest of the project!
