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The Piedmont Highlander

The Piedmont Highlander

Seniors explore existentialism

Existentialism is “a philosophical attitude that stresses the individual’s unique position as a self-determining agent responsible for the authenticity of his or her choices,” according to dictionary.com.

It is this existentialist attitude that PHS seniors in English 7-8 will be building on this semester as they work on individual senior existentialism projects. The projects will be based around things that students care about, like singing, skateboarding or painting and will be up to each individual how to express their passion.

Senior Sebastian Mueller is one of several students taking road trips.

“I want to go down to L.A. and interview people about what they care about and what they think the meaning of life is,” Mueller said, “I think this is really going to help me discover what I want to do with life and my purpose.”

Teachers Mercedes Foster and Deborah Hill’s Senior English classes are taking very unique approaches to this, where several students are taking road trips to find the meaning of life, others are creating 3-D masterpieces to illustrate their views of the world and society.

Foster said, “I have some very intellectually creative students this year and I wanted to give them an opportunity to make an assignment that they have to do, but they get to choose what it is. In other years I have had very specific parameters, but this year the only two rules are: Whatever you choose, you have to be able to logically relate it to something that we have learned in the Existentialism unit, and the other one is, it has to be personally meaningful.”

She thinks the relevance of the assignment is that the students get to really push themselves in a creative way. Foster also thinks a large percentage of her students are starting to get that they can really do whatever they want, and they can change their projects to find something meaningful.

Senior Brian Hosler said, “I plan to interview others about what they liked most about their childhoods, be it LEGOs or Play-doh, and then spend a week or two playing with the most common suggestion to find my inner child.” Hosler said, “I think this is a great opportunity to find what I want to get out of life.”

There will be a writing component to whatever they choose to do, and that writing component they will make connections to the literature and the philosophy that senior English students have been studying in class, but the project itself isn’t really gradable.

“I don’t expect anyone to do two months of work, but I do expect everyone to do two months of thought,” Foster said, “just keep it in your head, or back pocket and keep thinking about it. If it’s something that you don’t even think about, you are just wasting your time.”

 

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