The Life and Times of a Video Game Design Student

So, my teacher came up to me and my classmate during one of our breaks today. My immediate reaction was, of course, “Oh, crap, what the hell did I do?” But it turns out that I wasn’t in trouble, but rather that he wanted us to help out with something having to do with class assignments.

Oh yeah, did I mention that the closest I ever came to being all gung-ho about helping out with school was when I joined the prom committee in the 8th grade because the vice principal looked so forlorn that no one was joining? There have been times when I’ve thought, “Maybe I should get more involved with the school,” but ultimately I haven’t.

Now I’ve been drafted into it. I wonder what my teacher thought when I gave him my Look of Horror. But, yeah, so whenever students have assignments due, we get to get up at the end of class, collect them, then go down to the office, mark down anyone who didn’t turn one in, then place the stack on my teacher’s desk. This also means that every Friday I will have to stay late after school.

Oh well, at least it gives me more time to hang out with my classmates (one of whom I’m already friendly with, and the other of whom I now have a chance to be friendly with).

Today, when talking about the history of video games my teacher mentioned that 1987 was when he first bought the Famicon (ie. NES). Then he asked all of the students who hadn’t been born yet to raise their hands. 90% of the class did.

The NES was my first console. Ever. I’m old enough to have played games on my friend’s Atari. Heck, I remember when hard drives were measured in megabytes. My computer back in the States has an old 3.6 gig HD in it and I remember when I was excited because of how big that was.

25 isn’t that old. Really. But thinking about how my real experience is simply “history” to my classmates sure makes me feel old.

So, it’s been a little over a week since school started. It both is, and isn’t, what I expected. Having gone through various types of schools — typical K - 12 American schooling, university in Canada, and finally Japanese language school — I have experienced a range of approaches to teaching. HAL has incorporated elements from all of those so far, as well as adding its own unique style in the process. (more…)