Metacognition: Poetry

This week we started the poetry unit and began the task of writing our own poetry. For the past few days I've had a phrase stuck in my head, and I didn't know where it came from or why it was there. But today when we were sitting in class listening to TED and the mocking bird poem, I suddenly realized that I had been fixated on the beginning of a poem. As quickly as I could, I wrote down the sentence and then my thoughts just took off. I felt like I couldn't stop writing, and soon my poem was finished.  

After I read through my poem, I thought about Mr. Allen's quote "To what degree do I understand that which I am about to reject". I realized that I had been too quick to disregard this idea that had been stuck in my head because I hadn't taken the time to understand it, I couldn't comprehend how it could have any significance to any part of my life. Instead, I was just getting annoyed by how fixated my brain seemed to be on it. If I had just realized that my subconscious was trying to give me a creative idea I could have been finished with my poem earlier, but no. I chose to be stubborn and reject my own creativity because I wasn't sure how to understand it. 

As I continued to think about it, I realized that I do this a lot.  On multiple occasions I have had an idea or a word or a theme stuck in my head but I have completely disregarded it because I figured that it wasn't relevant to  any tasks at hand, and  I think that this may just be part of my creative process. I think that my subconscious creates ideas to complete a project and then once the rest of my mind recognizes it, it is processed until the project is finished. Unfortunately, this probably isn't the best strategy because it often leads to frustration and writers block. But at the same time I think that it also allows for huge revelations, which in my opinion is the most important part of learning. If you aren't making any personal discoveries, then you aren't really learning. You are just going through the process and having information thrust upon you, rather than absorbing information. My creative process is what enabled me to join academy, and hopeful it is good enough to take me a great deal farther throughout the rest of my life.