Engaging Critically

I admit that I have been posting less and less. If you believe the reason for this is due to me not having as many things in the first 2 months, you are 180 degrees off. Having now entered my third month at AC (I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S ONLY THE THIRD MONTH) I find myself almost twice as busy as I was previously. But having come into the third month also means its time for yet another AC Diploma Period. This time the first years had out Critical Engagement Conference while the 2nd years had their Middle Eastern Conference. 

I was particularly excited for this conference for a number of reasons. First, many 2nd years had told me this had been their favourite conference in their first year. Secondly, I personally feel that the idea of learning how to engage and more broadly, communication, is essential when trying to start projects, etc. Thus I thought this conference would be extremely relevant to arm me with skills and ideas for future projects. Thirdly, the idea of a couple of code-free days is heaven right now. It's the last few weeks of school which also mean that we are having our end of year tests ): a real mood damper. 

Our conference started on Wednesday and lasted till Friday. Unlike our first conference, this one was only three days (as opposed to five), everyone is feeling the 'business' build-up. We had a little introduction before the official start of the conference on a Tuesday night as we needed to be given a few instructions on the when, where's and how's before the start of the Diploma Period. Moreover, I was even more involved with the conference being in the Global Faculty. Because we had gone through some training programs in Global that were similar to the ones that were going to be held, we were also the Faculty in charge of assisting the Conference.

On all three days, we started the mornings with introductions to the areas we would be focusing on for that day. We would all gather in the Tythe Barns and one of the facilitators would talk about the idea for that day. Next we would split into smaller groups and go to the classrooms to discuss the topics for the day and basically let the conversation flow where it will. in the afternoon, we were allowed to sign up for 2 different workshops of our choice that were led by one of the facilitators. 

I really preferred the fact that for the Critical Engagement Conference we could choose our own workshops. As for the Social Justice Conference, we were assigned workshops, and though all of them seemed extremely interesting, there were some I would have really liked to attend just because they dealt with issues that I felt very passionately about. Which is why I liked the fact that for the CE conference, they left it up to us to attend the workshops we were interested in. 

I won't go into the details of the days and the workshops because this blog is already running pretty long and I have to go and revise for a Physics test right after this. But I will say that I really enjoyed this conference and personally found the things we learnt a lot more useful for application in everyday life, and life right now as compared to the Social Justice Conference. It really made me consider the hidden implications of the everyday actions I might be carrying out have. That is not to say that it has made me extremely self-conscious about what I do, rather, that I must always remember that every thing I do has some form of consequence or another and that it is always good to take some time off to carefully consider the possible outcomes, especially when the reason for my carrying out this action is for the purpose of helping someone else. I would not want to ultimately be harming them instead!

"There's nothing wrong with things taking time." - James Dyson