The Final Reflection

So here it is. The final reflection.

I’ve always been bad at endings. I don’t like goodbyes and I don’t like the feeling that time is moving. Maybe it’s because I’m terrified of growing up. I’ve written about this in other classes. I keep landing on it because I can’t get past it. Every ending is a small rehearsal for the bigger one, and this one is worse because the course was different. The most unique I’ve ever taken. And now it’s just over.

I don’t like to regret things. But I’ll always feel bad for the sessions I missed when life got busy, because I’ll never get to sit in that room again. Every session was fresh. Every session was new. There were so many different people with so many different interests and life paths, and they were all kind. They were all accepting. I’m trying to write this without it sounding like a thank-you card.

So I’ll start with what the course actually did to me, which is the question I’ve been avoiding.

What it did to me

I can’t pinpoint one thing this course did to me. People go through a lot in life, and a lot of it happens during the time you’re taking a course. You end up giving the course credit for things that were going to happen to you anyway, just because the events lined up. So I’ll be careful here. But there’s one thing I know is true and I’d put on this course directly.

I learned to stop being afraid of failing. I’d rather embrace it now. I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to get things right the first time, and the older I get the more I see that success never really teaches you anything. It just boosts your ego. Failure is the part that actually does the work. You can’t get everything right the first time, and if you did, you haven’t really learned anything. I know I have a lot of issues to work on. I’m fully aware of that. I make a lot of mistakes. But I learn from them, even if it takes me a while.

The clearest sign of this for me was the work I did on The Semester game. The first draft was the safe version. The version I could hide behind. Then I came back to it and had to start over, because I couldn’t live with the first one once I’d seen it for what it was. That gap between draft one and draft two is where I learned something this semester. The final version wasn’t everything I’d envisioned. If it had been, it would’ve been a game only I could play. And that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to make something that worked for someone else, not just for me. Letting go of the version I’d built in my head was its own kind of failure, and I’m okay with that now.

I like to share the person I am. The raw, real, authentic me. The flawed and the broken. There’s no reason to put up a front for people. Being aware of that is what keeps me centered, and being centered is what actually helps me improve. That’s the thing this course gave me that I’ll keep.

The day at Tahrir

The day at Tahrir is the one I keep coming back to. I’ve had friends from all over the world for as long as I can remember. I code-switch constantly. I never noticed how much until I was put in a room where switching wasn’t an option, and I had to find the Arabic word or sit in the silence. It was harder than I’d expected. I’ve basically been speaking English my whole life. I’ve never really stopped. So trying to stop all at once was close to impossible. It doesn’t really bother me. But it’s interesting to me, and I’m happy I’m aware of it now.

I won’t change it though. The code-switching is part of who I am. And here’s where I want to be careful with myself, because I’ve heard people use “it’s part of who I am” as a shield. I’ve been guilty of it too. For a while I was doing it with my avoidant nature. I don’t hate that part of me, but I started seeing it affect my life, and that’s where I had to draw the line. There’s a difference between accepting a part of yourself and using that acceptance to avoid working on it. I think the test is whether the thing is hurting you or the people around you. If it is, “it’s who I am” isn’t a reason anymore. It’s an excuse. The code-switching isn’t hurting anyone. The avoidance was hurting me. So one I keep, and the other I work on. At my own pace. And that’s okay. Everyone has their flaws. I am who I am for a reason, for better or not.

What I’ll carry into my work

I share most of my views with my father. We’ve been business partners since I was a kid, and I take after him in more ways than one. So when he tells me what AI can and can’t do in our line of work, I’m naturally inclined to agree. Hard manual labor still matters in every part of life and that isn’t getting replaced anytime soon. Maybe when we have fully functioning robots, but that’s light years away.

Here’s the part where I think the course actually changed how I see my own work. I use AI a lot in my workflow. Marketing strategies, data collection, market research, comparative research. Even the small stuff, reading emails, setting reminders, going over meeting notes, setting objectives, storing my plans, tracking my goals. It’s like having ten assistants who each keep up with a different part of my life, and they do it well. It doesn’t replace my mind or my ideas. It adopts them and helps me turn them into reality. I could live without it. Anything it does, a human could do, even if less efficiently. But I wouldn’t be able to keep my head centered on my goals without the organization it gives me. That’s the honest version.

What this course did was make me think about which parts of my work I’d let AI touch and which parts I’d protect. The answer is the same as my father’s. The cultural feel of what we make is the thing nobody else can replicate. That’s the thing I’d never hand over.

The same is true for how I study. AI is a useful assistant if you know which tools to reach for. I started using NotebookLM during finals this semester and it changed how I prepare for exams. It generates a video overview of the material, or a podcast where two people go back and forth about what I’m trying to learn, and I can jump in and ask questions. It builds flashcards and quizzes. I regret not finding it earlier. There are so many tools like this, each one built for a specific task, and if you know what to use, your productivity goes up tenfold. The rule is simple. Use AI to be more productive, not to replace your mind. As long as you stay on the right side of that line, you can go crazy with it. Just know where to look.

This course made me more aware of all of this, but I was never the person who’d use AI to replace myself or my authenticity. That’s something I value more than anything to me.

The one thing I wish I’d learned earlier, and it’s something this course put in front of me even if I’m still working on it, is that it’s never bad to ask for help. I’m not good at this yet. I’ll try to be better at it from now on.

The three pieces I’d show

If I had to show someone three pieces of work and say this is what I learned this semester, I wouldn’t pick the polished ones. I’d pick the messy ones, on purpose.

The first and second drafts of my game, together. Not the final version alone. Both of them, side by side. The first draft (https://reflect.creativitycourse.org/published/the-silent-world/) was the safe version. The second draft (https://reflect.creativitycourse.org/published/the-semester-game/) was the one I had to make myself write. The point of showing both isn’t the game. It’s the gap between them. That gap is the whole thing.

The reflection that came with the second draft is the second piece, and it’s published at the same link. It’s a bit personal, but I want to share it. I believe in the beauty of flaws and the fact that it’s okay to have them. The reflection is where I admitted I’d been hiding in the first draft and didn’t know it until I was already deep into the second. That kind of writing is uncomfortable to put in front of someone, but it’s the most honest thing I made this semester for any class.

The third piece is this final reflection. The one you’re reading right now. I almost picked one of my academic pieces for this slot, but I don’t think anyone would actually care about that, and I know I wouldn’t. The truth of my experience is what I want to share. My failures and how I overcame them. How the messy parts shaped the person I am today. If someone wanted to know what I actually got out of this course, they wouldn’t learn it from a grade or a polished assignment. They’d learn it from the things I wrote when I was still figuring it out.

Three pieces. All of them unfinished in their own way. That’s the point.

What I’d change

I’m going to be honest, I’m not great at criticizing things. Especially something I got a lot out of. But if I’m asked to pick what I’d change, two things come to mind.

I never connected with Slack as our class platform. It was a little weird for me. I never got notifications for some reason, even though I have them turned on for everything else. A WhatsApp group would have been a lot more comfortable. I know Slack is the professional choice and there’s probably a reason behind it, but in practice it pushed me away from the class conversation rather than into it. I want to be in the conversation. The platform was the thing that kept me out.

The other one is small but it would have helped me more than anything. A clear place to catch up when I missed a session. I don’t know if this exists somewhere I didn’t find, and if it does I’m sorry for missing it. But there were sessions I couldn’t make, and when I came back the next week I felt like I’d lost the thread of something everyone else was carrying. A simple recap, even a few sentences or a recording or a quick note on the blog from the professor, would have made me feel less like I was playing catch-up for the rest of the semester.

Who should take this course

The curious type who’s not afraid to get out of his comfort zone and try new things.

The tools

Five tools from this course, with what I actually think of each one.

Claude is the AI tool I used the most. It’s useful for organization and coding, and it became part of how I keep my work moving day to day. I’ll keep using it.

The class blog at reflect.creativitycourse.org is the tool I’d most want to see in other courses. It made the work feel like it had somewhere to live, not just somewhere to be submitted. There’s a difference between turning something in and publishing it, and the blog gave the work that second kind of weight. I’d use this format for my own writing outside of school.

Slack I already covered above. It didn’t work for me.

Netlify is the tool I’d never used before this course and now use all the time. I built and launched both of my games on it, and I’d never built a real website before. The friction is so low it almost disappears. I’ll keep using it for anything I want to launch quickly.

Quick, Draw! was the small surprise of the semester. You get a prompt, you draw it, and then it shows you how other people drew the same thing. It was fun. It was also surprising to find out how the thing actually works underneath, that it’s learning from millions of drawings to recognize what you’re scribbling.

The close

I’m still bad at endings. Writing this hasn’t fixed that. What it did was give me a way to mark this one, which is something I don’t usually do. I usually let things end and move on and pretend it didn’t matter. This one mattered. I’m not going to fake a clean ending because that’s not what the course taught me. The course taught me to sit in the thing and write the thing and trust that the writing will hold whatever I put in it.

The fear of growing up didn’t go away. But for one semester I was in a room with people who were trying to figure things out at the same time I was, and that’s the closest thing to peace I’ve found in a classroom. I’m going to miss this.

I’ll leave you with the rule I live by. If you’re looking for a needle in a haystack, burn the haystack. Say how you feel. Do the things you want. The right people and the right things will come to you. Nothing else matters. People spend their entire lives politely sifting, picking through hay one strand at a time, hoping the right person, the right opportunity, the right life will eventually surface if they’re just nice enough, quiet enough, palatable enough. It won’t. The hay is the problem. The solution is to be unapologetically, terrifyingly yourself, and watch how fast the haystack catches fire and reveals the needle you’ve been looking for all this time.