From beginning to end, Open Source Learning never ceased to interest me, yet my interests never exactly got the best of me until the year came to a close. I don't know what it was, but at first, I simply could not accept the way things were running in the class. I've never ran without direction before. I've never been the adventurer of an Odyssey, I've never been the king of my own castle, I've never been the Siddhartha in my own journey to find myself. All my life, I had others to influence me and make decisions for me, but now I realize that I have no right to an opinion. I simply have a beginning, a middle, and an end, such is the catch-22 of all life, but that doesn't stop people like me from making a difference, changing an environment, leaving a mark. Open Source Learning helped all of us do that, not just me. Being one of the first guinea pigs to this next-generation style of education, I am the hero of this story, but I did not work alone. All great things have never been accomplished completely in solitude, and if there's one thing I learned in science camp, it's about the connections we make with others. If I'm going to be the hero, my colleagues assemble the rest of this "Justice League" we call students, with reality playing the villain; something we overcame as we tossed away fear and doubt and redeveloped that hint of youth that we were missing for a while now. Open Source Learning creates dreamers and doers from the same mold.
In the end, it was the beginning of something great. We, as students, found something that couldn't have been attained through anything "normal," and that something was passion. We, as seniors, don't know what lies ahead. We don't know for certain if Open Source Learning will continue with us on our journeys, but it was a heck of an adventure. Whether we find ourselves "mobbing" to new heights or reading a new book or baking a new cake or even building a new nation, we few, we happy few, we band of brothers, will do things with the compassion and the burning intensity that founded the "adventures of us" and the newer, braver world. According to the mobbers of the dunes, "people just help you when you're stuck, and that's how life should be right?" According to the bakers, "it's not about the food you bake, but about the love that goes into it." According to the spirit squads, "change is possible." According to "Classy U", "never go in alone." And according to Open Source Learning, "two plus two makes five."
It worked. We found a passion. We reached for the sky and jumped out with a parachute. We built nations and conquered others. We're just kids. If Open Source Learning can do this for one group of kids in one year, who knows what could happen next? And with that inference left hanging in the balance, I sign off.
