WP3: Finding Fun
I can’t go to bed until I finish these sentences.
I know I can do better than this.
I fail when I can do better.
I can’t fail.
I’m so tired.
I’d rather drop out than fail.
I’d rather be dead than fail.
I’d rather be dead than fail.
This is what my 15 year old self said to motivate her through schoolwork. Without proper treatment for her newly diagnosed ADHD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder, these affirmations pushed her through many essays, annotations, and exams. School has been so integral to her identity that subpar performance was not an option.
Everything started so well. I attached myself to education at such a young age since learning was fun. That is, education served not only to teach about the world or further my occupational skills, but it was also enjoyable as a pastime. Fun is quite subjective, but in my life it is derived from activities that are entertaining, engaging, and make me happy. I do not think fun has to be recreational or voluntary either — as long as it could be recreational or voluntary. In this regard, having fun is having agency. One is actively engaged in a task they want to do, and the only one who can determine if said task is fulfilling is themselves.
People want to play and be entertained because fun is rewarding. Hard work is rewarding too, but it lacks instant gratification. Receiving an immediate sense of satisfaction is crucial to functioning with ADHD. To an extent, I need fun to function. While it may sound quite immature to favor instant gratification over long term satisfaction, the two are not mutually exclusive. In my early childhood, education provided both.
Because my rigorous high school education lacks fun, I failed to receive the many benefits it offers in the learning environment. The paper Fun in Learning: The Pedagogical role of fun in Adventure Education by Christian Bisson and John Luckner argues for why fun is needed in challenging classroom settings. When rigorous education is demanding on students’ drive and well being, fun serves to both balance out the stress and difficulty while also enhancing the learning itself.
It is generally understood that you cannot teach young children like you could to teens and adults for this reason. Kids need fun to engage in learning. I do not imagine there are many elementary school classes where the teacher will pull up a slideshow and lecture about the water cycle for an hour. Early childhood education is expected to be exciting and interesting to some degree. While hands-on learning and play in education has a large role in early development, the reason elementary school classes are lively and fun is much simpler. Children like having fun. Fun is an intrinsic motivator as described by Bisson and Luckner, encouraging students “to engage themselves in activities with which they have little or no previous experience” (109). Building off that idea, fun also motivates students to engage with material which they have little or no previous interest in. Most kids won’t be bothered to memorize facts about every U.S. president, but have the class dress up as a president to talk about their history and they may learn at least something. They too are driven more by instant gratification than long term satisfaction.
Fun modes of learning do not stop in the classroom. Educational shows, books, and games are an established part of childhood education. While exploring my upbringing through play and entertainment in my WP2 last month, the value of edutainment became apparent. PBS Kids Go! — the programming block that consumed most of my early free time — effectively taught me relatively high level academic material because they were fun. Although my favorite shows such as Cyberchase, Fetch! With Ruff Rufffman, and The Electric Company are made for kids, I noted how each series did not let its fun, childish appeal to patronize the educational value. Instead the content is “further [enhanced] with interesting and appealing characters, stories, and styles” (“PBS Kids Go! and the Value of Edutainment”).
Children like myself at the time value both being entertained and being educated. Arguably people of every age do too, but because teens and adults can sit through plain classes, traditional educators assume they should. This becomes problematic when one examines what kind of fun is used to “sugarcoat” learning and the type of people who get left behind as a result.
Fun learning platforms tend to be creative, based in media, or generally artistic. Arts and crafts belong in the elementary school classroom, but are phased out as students get older. Because art adds fun to learning, society prescribes a childish stigma to creativity. Earlier this year I wrote about the negative effects of excluding art from academia, primarily because many marginalized groups “are let down by the prejudiced pillars of institutionalized education and then find their calling in art” (“Credit to the Artist”). Artistry suits the way my neurodivergence functions much more than formal methods of teaching which expect the attention and structure I mentally cannot provide.
My brain seeks stimulation in the form of playful, expressive creation. When classroom learning complimented that, I thrived to the point where teachers labeled me as gifted. Regardless of how beneficial art is to how I learn and communicate, I had to conform to the expectations of an academically gifted student. The only way to be taken seriously as a student is to abandon childlike fun.
So until my sophomore year breakdown, I could never imagine myself actually pursuing game design. Something creative? In the entertainment industry? Oh please — those jobs are for dropouts who can’t get real jobs. I performed well in school on paper, so naturally I should have been fit for the fields school has prepared me for.
At the same time, it was obvious how much more I cared about the enjoyable, recreational aspects of my life compared to the academic ones. My class schedule contained electives like Sculpture/3D Design over AP Chemistry simply because I had more fun making art than balancing redox equations. Despite how much I would let academia influence my outward behavior, what I choose to pursue for pure enjoyment shapes who I really am. After accepting that fact, I would argue Pokémon has greater meaning in my life than any grade school class.
Since I was a kid, Pokémon provided pure, leisurely fun. No adult told her that memorizing every Pokémon theme song could be a key factor in becoming a successful creator, and yet without this franchise I may have never pursued game design. In my WP2, I also explored Pokémon as the source of my creative upbringing. Being too complex for words, I found it much more fitting to represent in a flowchart:
The ten year journey from getting my first Pokemon card to attending the nation’s top game design program is not linear, and this diagram is a hefty simplification. The path is natural and complex, full of discovery as I let my curiosity run free. It is an education I claimed for myself. Though in the context of feminism, Adrienne Rich’s argument in Claiming an Education proves universal towards any non-conforming academic pursuits. I needed to stop allowing society’s childish perception of creative media to do my “thinking, talking, and naming for [me]” (610). Seeking fun is how I prioritize happiness and individual well being in academics.
Pokemon was the first entity I could play with on my own terms. I decided it was important, not a parent, teacher, or any other serious adult figure. I know my calling is in media and entertainment because it is derived from individual desire and personal fulfillmentUnfortunately, growing up in a system that does not take fun seriously made it difficult to advocate for myself and my creative interests until I had no other choice.
During my sophomore year breakdown, there was a point where I realized: if I would rather not exist than fail to uphold my academic potential, maybe I should not be in academia. This conclusion came as a result of my two favorite acronyms: ADHD and D&D.
A 2003 study examining the similarities between giftedness and ADHD concluded that “the suggestion of the diagnosis of giftedness can lead participants away from a diagnosis of ADHD”, and this influence means there could be “an exclusion of coverage of the characteristics of gifted children” in school counseling programs (Hartnett et al). When teachers claimed I was gifted, they were really just recognizing how I excelled at the fun, stimulating activities which my ADHD liked. The grey area between giftedness and neurodivergence proved to be detrimental when neither my parents nor my teachers had any idea how much I struggled in ninth grade just because I had good grades in honors classes. Every academic assignment took twice as long to be half as decent, but a fear of failure pushed me through the pain. I thought any form of meticulous work would wear me down like school until I picked up D&D.
Dungeons & Dragons is a tabletop roleplaying game that I began playing at the same time my ADHD worsened. By sophomore year I had taken on the role of Dungeon Master, running the sessions myself and creating my own original modules. Having to prepare for weekly games involved copious amounts of writing and planning, with the obligation to create a dynamic and interesting interactive story for my real life players. Becoming a good Dungeon Master is just as demanding yet significantly less stressful than being an honors student because D&D is fun. As a pedagogical stress reducer, “fun can be the catalyst that will allow such transformation [from distress to eustress]” (Bisson and Luckner 110). My lack of focus and executive dysfunction still greatly affects running the game, but spending extra time and effort to design interactive stories is an activity I choose to do outside of my obligations anyways.
Because high schools typically disregard more artistic modes of learning which are easier and more enjoyable for my neurodivergent, creatively inclined brain, I rarely had the chance to prove that somewhere in me exists talent and potential. Even with straight A’s, there were still a dozen others in my class with better academics. It took leaving my high school bubble and spending time at an art school in the summer of 2019 to realize that I am not dumb, and in fact I have the ability to produce insightful, substatial work. That work just is not through chemistry labs, world history tests, or literature essays. The fun derived from my creative academic work creates what Bisson and Luckner called relaxed alertness. Fun allows difficult work to “challenge learners discreetly and naturally so that new conceptual mapping (i.e., intellectual connections) will occur without engaging students in a downshifting response” (111). I struggle to put together any coherent thought when instructed to write a four page rhetorical analysis paper, but exploring morality while creating a 6500 word choose your own adventure style story is an enjoyable weekend project. By approaching my education in ways which organically compliment how I think, my ideas are no longer stuck behind unnecessary barriers.
While my preferred means of communication and expression are not formal, they are by no means less effective than what a school’s English class deems proper. The presentation of my ideas are lax and childish, but to force them out in a structured, rule restricted manner limits what I am capable of expressing. By playing with my concepts instead of forcing them into structured molds allows me to foster more comprehensive, meaningful messages. John Cleese touches upon how childish play aids understanding in his book Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide. He observes how children at play “are not trying to avoid making mistakes” because they are yet to be burdened by the responsibility of reality (Cleese 15). There is a sense of liberation in having fun, and adults who play with their work like a child shed the anxiety caused by doubt and external pressure.
This sense of freedom is part of a suspension of social reality alongside fun’s other pedagogical benefits. “Social barriers are raised so that everyone’s reality can be protected” in learning spaces, but trying to enforce strict standards “[hinders] the learning process about self and others” for those who cannot meet such expectations (Bisson and Luckner 110). As idealistic as this sounds, I have seen a significant improvement in the quality of my work when I get to play with the ideas and presentation. After elementary school, I rarely had the chance to have fun with school. Now starting my game design education, professors encourage their students to release our worries over formalities. Mistakes are encouraged, allowing me to release my creative potential without fear.
I recognize that being able to obtain my idea of fun in education comes with privilege. Having supportive parents and a degree of social and economic mobility has made it easier to take risks. Non-creative fields are seen as suitable for intelligent adults because there is safety in their practicality. With that in mind, I tend to frame fun as a mindset rather than a goal. Hard work does not have to feel difficult, demanding, or boring to be worth the effort. I expend more time and energy making games for school than I do studying calculus, but it makes me happy. Creating art and media is not something I force myself into so others will think I am mature and intelligent; I enjoy what I do in the moment and know it will continue to benefit me in the future.
Eight year old Amanda would probably be disappointed to find out I am not currently studying math or robotics at an Ivy League school. Well, at least until she learns that instead she gets to play video games for homework. She’d think that’s pretty darn cool‒ much better than grieving over a prestigious sounding yet oh-so-boring class.
Works Cited
Bisson, Christian, and John Luckner. “Fun in Learning: The Pedagogical Role of Fun in Adventure Education.” Journal of Experiential Education, vol. 19, no. 2, 1996, pp. 108–112., doi:10.1177/105382599601900208.
Cleese, John. Creativity: a Short and Cheerful Guide. Hutchinson, 2020
Hartnett, D. Niall, Jason M. Nelson, and Anne N. Rinn. “Gifted or ADHD? The possibilities of misdiagnosis.” Roeper Review 26.2 (2004): 73–76.
Rich, Adrienne. “Claiming an Education.” Open Questions. Ed. Chris Anderson and Lex Runciman. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005. 608–611.
Sharkey, Amanda. “Credit to the Artist: a Response to Writing Remix Ep.1.” Medium, 3 Feb. 2021, medium.com/writing-150-spring-2021/credit-to-the-artist-a-response-to-writing-remix-ep-1-f8a6ff4123dd.
Sharkey, Amanda. “PBS Kids Go! and the Value of Edutainment.” Medium, 7 Mar. 2021, medium.com/wp2-i-never-grew-up/pbs-kids-go-and-the-value-of-edutainment-f450a504d557.
Sharkey, Amanda. “Pokémon: What Started It All.” Medium, 7 Mar. 2021, medium.com/wp2-i-never-grew-up/pok%C3%A9mon-what-started-it-all-48316fbd9af7.
This is just so that the display image isn’t the Pokémon flowchart :)
