What do you wish you’d learned in school?

I was conversing with Jon Becker on Twitter a while back. He’d retweeted this tweet1 to this 50 questions project. Basically, the idea is to go someplace and ask 50 people a fairly open ended question. In this particular case, they asked people “Where would you like to wake up tomorrow?”

That stirred up some interest for me because I’ve been kicking around the idea of interviewing random people about education. I have a variety of reasons for doing this.

  • One, I suck at talking to strangers2. This would force me to do it and in what I see as the hardest way possible. No one likes to be approached by a random stranger with a camera. Hopefully, practicing under adverse conditions will result in an increased rate of improvement.
  • Two, I think it’ll be interesting. You never know what people might say. Everyone’s been through some kind of schooling experience. I’ll be looking for trends and hidden/not-so-hidden truths. Even if nothing like that develops, I’m curious.
  • Three, I occasionally have layovers in airports or I’m waiting in other places and I’m bored. It’d kill some time to do interviews like these.
  • Four, I’d like to compile the eventual pieces and parts into something that’s interesting.

So, on the drive up to NYC for WordCamp I was talking to Jim Groom and throwing around some questions. I ended up picking “What do you wish you’d learned in school?”

So with all that build up, I give you the only interview I shot that day.

What do you wish you’d learned in school? Attempt #1 from Tom Woodward on Vimeo.

For a variety of reasons, I only asked two people this question. You see one of them above. The other turned me down.

I don’t know if this will have any attraction for other people but if you’d like to join in and submit videos that’d be welcomed. I’m opening to tagging or other options to make them easy for people to find. Comments? Thoughts?


1 still hate that word

2 If you’ve ever met me, you’re likely agreeing that I need to work on this quite a bit.

4 thoughts on “What do you wish you’d learned in school?

  1. I love this idea, though I agree you might have problems getting people to talk. I wouldn’t talk to a stranger in an airport! On the other hand, if they do, wow. Imagine what a collection of true thoughts you would have.

  2. This would be cool. Good luck finding ways to not be creepy! I’d find a psychology department and ask them how they get strangers to answer questions.

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