Improvisation and Education

It is a common belief that improvisation is a nice thing to deal with. Indeed, I have always thought of it as something helpful. Improvising, in fact, is thought to activate as well as refresh the brain. If we think of it, it could also be said that it makes some processes more creative and attractive…even some days.

In reality, we all have heard of what having everything settled in advance may involve, a bit of dullness the least. Nevertheless, when referring to education, there are some things which need to be ‘repetitive’, that is to say, ordered. Regarding improvisation and education, I, as a student, was facing some of this improvisation during the last month.

Firstly, just when we, students, thought that the ‘only’ thing left for us to do was to study and hand in our projects - which does not exactly sound like nothing to do – lots of projects to be handed in during the following weeks came out of the blue.

Secondly, this workload didn’t really come from a single place but from some at a time, which somehow left us exposed and helpless. We, of course, did work on everything we were asked and did not say anything about this.

However, now that all is over, I need to confess that this process sounded as a bit of improvisation to me. All these demands resulted quite stressful, and I was thinking that the actual outcome was exactly the reversed from the one, if any, expected by the ones who asked for these tasks in the very last minute.

Hence, even if I don’t feel entitled to give advice to anyone, I think that maybe a bit of previous schedule instead of such an amount of improvised demand would be more effective from the student’s point of view. I am not exactly complaining, just letting know what we felt, just in case these thoughts are of help to anyone who reads this. Just saying.