Hi Robin, My apologies for the delay and for any inconvenience this may have caused. The 12-hour plane flight and jet lag made me ill for a few days, but I am feeling better now. I go by he/him. ## Why You I decided to ask you for the letter because I felt like I talked to you more than I talked with most other teachers, since you are one of the most open teachers (of mine) who is always open to student feedback and who actually puts effort to learning more about our perspectives and stories, which I really appreciate. ## Outside Class Right now, rethinking over what did you actually know about me beyond class time, one incidant I can remember that occasion when we had a conversation because I left class early one Friday (again my apologies for being disrespectful and not communicative about it beforehand). I remember sharing how I felt like class time could be used more efficiently and why I was frustrated with the timetable system. Although I admit there is little we can do to change from outside, I am glad that I shared it with you, which forced me to review my inner struggle and significantly improvement my level engagement and committment later in the course. Another occasion was exactly last Friday when we had the walk and I talked about my visit to the Sudbury School Amersfoort (some links if you are still interested -- [school website](https://sudburyschoolamersfoort.nl/); [my experience](https://jimmyzhang.space/Backend/Events/Visit+to+Sudbury+School+Amersfoort)), the only Sudbury School in the Netherlands. We talked about how we could structure the course so that students are more motivated and how we can truly link the content of the course to the lives of the students, to topics they care about and feel passionate about. ## Inside Class Some highlights I remember from class -- One is the activity where we uncovered UWCM's institutional assumptions -- I really enjoyed that since it successfully links our classwork to our real life, which is very rare throughout the IB course in general, and I really appreciate it. I wrote more notes later on, but never got the chance to share them with the class for some reason. Maybe next term? And [here it is](https://jimmyzhang.space/04+Bibliotheca/Uncovering+UWCM's+institutional+assumptions) if you are still interested! Another one is when we were organizing the timeline of Billy's life in chronological order in Slaughterhouse 5. I remember I half-jokingly opposed and said that Kurt Vonnegut would not be happy seeing us do this, because by his words, "it's an extremely human thing" to try to understand things linearly and finding cause-and-effects, where in reality things are entangled in complex relationships, and linearity of time is only an illusion. Don't know why but this moment stuck in my mind. I wish we have discussed this more. --- In the end, I guess one thing that I sometimes struggle the most -- whether in your class or at school in general -- is to understand what exactly are we doing. Not in terms of lost in the IB program (in fact IB never seems easier to me), but in terms of sense-making and understanding how this all links to my life and future. A lot of the time, things come to me in a way that don't make sense while everyone else is taking them for granted. Nevertheless, in the meantime, I'd love to have more conversations with you and share more of my feedback if we have the opportunities, so that even within the 50 minutes we have (in that limited room with excessive CO2 and a lack of oxygen -- which we should definitely do something about), we can make the time more worthwhile. Again I really appreciate your open-mindedness and all the support -- I really wouldn't be writing all these to anyone else. Hope you have a wonderful break and see you next term! Sincerely, Jimmy Zhang ## Some Other Links about me - https://jimmyzhang.org -- my personal homepage where I share my essays, photography, and some projects. - https://jimmyzhang.space -- where I open-soucre my knowledge & learning through sharing my notes, with monthly updates