Reschool Yourself

Author Archive: mjdicker

Mulling Over Memories & Spiced Wine

I’ve taken a breather from blogging in the past few days to let my fall reschooling sink in. It feels good to take a few days of real vacation, probably the first that I’ve let myself have since August. When alone, I work myself into the ground, but when I’m with friends, they thankfully wrench me away from my workaholism. And whenever my sister Gill comes to town, as she did this weekend, then the wild rumpus starts.

During the holidays, I’ll be blogging sporadically. Gill and her fiance, Brian, are in Sonoma this week, and Darren arrives tomorrow. This means there will be lots of carousing and posing for ridiculous photos, but not as much writing. Next week I’ll be buckling down and gearing up to spend the spring in Jackson, so I hope to get rid of the piles of CDs and bags of yellow pads that seem ready to swallow me whole.

I’m still mulling over and making sense of my time in the classrooms. The final step of revisiting the past will be processing “personal artifacts”: old photos, home movies, and keepsakes. Perhaps most importantly, I’ll read the writing that I’ve saved from my school days, such as newspaper editorials, humor pieces, journal entries, personal statements from my college applications, and the short autobiography I wrote my senior year of high school. My teenage writing is rife with school stress and nostalgia for a carefree childhood, and it helps me understand the powerful influence school had on who I became.

I spent so many years wishing that I could just be a kid again. Now that I’ve taken the opportunity to relive my childhood in many ways, I’m finally ready to let it go.

December 23, 2008 About the Project, Childhood 2 Read more >

Classroom Phase Complete!

I officially completed my classroom reschooling today, almost four months exactly after I began August 20th. I’m glad that I decided to spend a week tracing my way back through the grades. It felt good today to see all the kids I’ve connected with over the fall and revisit the school spaces. I spent yesterday with the fifth, fourth, and third graders and today with the second and first graders, ending with kindergarten at the very end of the day. Coming back to where I started gave me a strong sense of closure. I’ll write a longer post soon about my last week of reschooling and how it all feels. At the moment I’m running out the door to various appointments and holiday parties — onto the next thing right away as usual!

In the next few weeks I’ll be doing the following:

  • Sharing stories that haven’t made it into the blog yet
  • Sorting through old journal entries, photos, and other keepsakes
  • Clearing major clutter and preparing to spend the spring in Mississippi
  • Reflecting on overall lessons learned and personal progress during the fall reschooling
  • Making plans for the spring, including what I want to learn and how to proceed with writing the book

As with the end of the college phase, my brain is brimming with information, images, and ideas. It’s so overwhelming that I feel like I need to zone out watching some awful reality TV just to let it all sink in. Maybe when I get home tonight, I’ll fashion myself a homemade diploma with Crayolas and construction paper, so I can make my graduation official.

December 19, 2008 About the Project 0 Read more >

Five Observations While Coming Full Circle

This week I’m revisiting my schools in reverse order to record descriptive details that I couldn’t focus on while participating: students’ hair color, teachers’ vocal inflections, and so on. I went back to high school on Tuesday, middle school today, and am finishing up at elementary school tomorrow. The timing just happened to work out that way, but it feels right to come full circle and end in kindergarten where I began four months ago. Here are five observations so far as I return for a second round of reschooling:

1. I feel that I’ve neutralized the emotional charge that school used to have for me, and I hope it lasts. While I still feel compelled to help transform public education, I’ve come to appreciate the great things about my schools and have stopped dwelling on the not-so-great ones.

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December 18, 2008 About the Project, High School, Middle School 0 Read more >

Memory Walk: College Living Spaces

My five and a half hour memory walk took me to all of my old living spaces at Santa Clara University, and here are some highlights.

These are the three places I lived at SCU:

1) Swig Hall, the 11-story freshman party dorm. Yes, it is really called Swig, after Benjamin Swig. Upperclassmen delighted in yelling, “WAKE UP, SWIG!” from below as they passed by at all hours of the night. People often set fire to couches outside or threw items off balconies. Always seems like a good idea at the time.

2) McLaughlin Hall, a quieter dorm, for sophomores at the time. I roomed with my friend Charlotte, a fellow Psych major and Type A student. Our best friends Katie and Alicia were next door. I got to stay in McLaughlin for four days and three nights while visiting SCU a couple of weeks ago. I loved every minute.

3) A 2-bedroom apartment in a complex near campus. I lived there with Charlotte, Katie, and Alicia during most of junior year (we all studied abroad during the fall quarter) and senior year. We had a lot of dinners and occasional dance parties, but we were all latecomers to the party scene, and none of us really drank alcohol until after college. Because of the Silicon Valley dot.com boom in around the year 2000, I had to share a room during all four years of college, and we paid a pretty penny for doing so.

I’m experimenting with using a captioned slideshow instead of posting full-sized pictures, so leave a comment and let me know what you think. Click a photo, which has a caption underneath, and hover on the right side and click the arrow to advance.

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Your Two Cents: Leave a Comment!

What have you remembered by walking around your college living spaces, or just looking at these photos?

December 17, 2008 College, School Memories 2 Read more >

Reschooling Tool #12: Memory Walk

During my visit to Santa Clara University, I had a conversation with one of my former Psychology professors that gave me a new understanding of Reschool Yourself. It helped me articulate why it’s important to revisit my schools, and what I’m taking from doing so.

As an SCU student, I had Dr. Jerry Burger as a professor, academic advisor, and supervisor for my thesis research. At the time, I didn’t realize that he was already doing extensive research on a topic closely connected with Reschool Yourself: making a pilgrimage home.

For more than a decade, Dr. Burger has surveyed and interviewed hundreds of people who journeyed back to the places they grew up: schools, playgrounds, local stores, and most importantly, their childhood homes.

“Their quest,” he writes, “was to connect with something only the place could provide.” He adds that he was surprised by “the large number of people who knocked on the door of a former home and asked the current owners if they could look around.  Without exception, the visitors were invited inside.”

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December 16, 2008 College, Personal Development, Reschooling Tools, 5 Read more >

Reschooling Tool #11: Get Stuff Done While You’re Healthy

I wish I’d gotten more stuff done this morning before I “Melia’d” my hand. This is what Darren calls the havoc I wreak with my clumsy ways, e.g. “You totally Melia’d that crystal vase!” (Derivation: the term “Munsoned” from the movie Kingpin.) I now realize that I could have been much more productive today if all my fingers were still intact.

This morning I woke up three hours earlier than I wanted to, my mind anxiously whirring as usual with all the things I want to accomplish this week. I’ve been feeling completely overwhelmed by all there is to do before I leave for New Orleans/Jackson in less than a month, including:

  • Get rid of major clutter. Decide what belongings I’m taking with me, and ship most of them.
  • Mine my copious notes to see what kind of follow-up I need to do at the schools, and arrange the visits.
  • Coordinate details for a visiting documentary director who will be filming me at the schools for two days in January. (Yes, exciting!)
  • Do preliminary research on grad schools in the Bay Area and try to meet with professors before I leave.
  • Work part-time at my dad’s office and develop an online training manual.
  • With Darren’s help, build a new website for my dad’s business, and for my freelance writing.
  • Schedule meetups with various friends to say goodbye (for now).
  • Oh, and there’s that Christmas thing. Thankfully, it’ll be a mostly no-present Christmas in my circles.

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December 15, 2008 Personal Development, Reschooling Tools, , 2 Read more >

Reschooling Tool #10: Self-Reflective Forwards

I haven’t done one of these internet forwards in ages, but they are oh-so entertaining. I prefer to think of them not as “a waste of hours of my life,” but rather “an important opportunity for self-reflection.”

Though they can be as self-indulgent as a love letter to yourself, forwards like this are actually helpful for regularly practicing introspection and recognizing what makes you an interesting person. Plus, they’re awesome for procrastinating what you’re actually supposed to be doing right now. Enjoy.

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December 14, 2008 Personal Development, Reschooling Tools 0 Read more >

Thank you for Amazoning!


Just a quick note to say thanks to those of you who are using my link to enter the Amazon website. In just a few days, the total is nearing $70, which is incredibly awesome for something that doesn’t cost either of us anything. The number of purchases has increased my referral rate; now 6.5% of anything you buy through the link (electronics, housewares, etc.) will go to Reschool Yourself. You can now click on the Amazon logo in the upper right corner of the homepage and then shop as usual. Even though the Reschool Yourself code disappears from the URL, it’s still tracking.

Since I used to work for a wonderful independent bookstore, Readers’ Books, I must encourage you to buy books from your local indie bookshop (or from the Readers’ website). But if you are shopping Amazon anyway, especially for non-book items, please use the link. Thank you!

December 14, 2008 About the Project 0 Read more >