Students practicing their photography skills in One Stone’s art area
By Josh Backer
One of the biggest differentiators that makes One Stone unique is the fact that it’s constantly changing. With this new term starting, not only are there completely new classes, but the schedule is completely different. The 2018 fall term started with three one hour blocks for classes, and then one two hour block afterwards that alternated each day from a class to D-Lab time. This seemed fairly structured and was easy to get used too. Being my naive self, I thought that this was how it had always been setup and how it always would be setup. But I’m happy to say that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
You see, in this new term one of the biggest game changers is that instead of having a full term, this term has been split up into two quarters. Which is AMAZING. The next biggest change is that we only have two classes a day. We have two main classes that alternate each day, a workshop and math labs in the morning. After lunch there is either D-Lab time that happened three times a week and the other two days are either advisory time or special ops. D-Lab time and advisory time are pretty self explanatory but special ops aren't. This is because they are yet another new addition to the schedule.
Special ops are two hour blocks in the afternoons that we take to help give back to One Stone and make it even more run by us. One of the special ops that’s happening this term is the One Store. This is allows students to help give back to One Stone by letting us collaborate in designing new products for the One Stone store among other things.
Practicing our Design Lab presentations for members of the community
Preparing for our new Design Labs: Problem solving without directions
But probably the reason that I’m excited for special ops the most is because of the fact that we DON’T get credit for doing them. Crazy, right? The reason I’m so behind this idea is because it encourages students to do something that they want to try out or are really passionate about or are just really good at. Because when we choose out of interest or passion we’re much more likely to do a good job. Since there's no credit for doing them we’re just gonna choose what we want without being blinded by the allure of a credit.
So yeah, One Stone is crazy and unpredictable. But that’s what makes it so amazing and special.
