Hello everyone, and welcome to my last and final post about my learning journey. It has come to a bittersweet end but I am proud to say that I was successful in completing my learning journey.
I began this semester thinking this class would be a challenge, and boy was I right. Or I guess the class itself was not too challenging, but, the learning project is where it began to get tough for me. With learning how to solve Rubik’s cubes, I tried my absolute best to not use YouTube, as many videos just show you how to solve a Rubik’s Cube. And to me, it seemed this method of learning would be too simple and ruin the experience for me.
I began this project as a way to connect with the kids at my work, however, I found that it is also so mind-numbingly simple now that it has become a fidget for me to use to help me maintain my focus on other projects or assignments. Solving a Rubik’s cube has been something I have recently been working on trying to complete, and with this assignment, I have been able to work hard on something and have that feeling of accomplishment once I have completed a step.
For some people Rubik’s cubes are a “children’s toy” however, for me, I did not mind that it could be considered that as it was interesting and something I have never been able to do. So, for this assignment, I used word of mouth to help teach me. As you may have read I had kids from work helping me with solving the 3×3. However, I began with the 2×2 and you might ask why I only received help once to learn how to solve the 2×2. Well…that is because the kid who was helping me was not always constant at my job, so I had to adapt and learn how to do most things on my own. Therefore, I would be the only constant person at my job who knew how to do it! Which was an exciting task for me to take on.
I began this project first just getting comfortable with the movements of a Rubik’s Cube. Initially, I had thought let’s just begin with the 3×3, but I decided that a 2×2 may be easier. So I began my research on how to solve the 2×2 without using YouTube! I found resources to show many different algorithms and pictures to help me understand how a 2×2 worked.
I began to learn how to put the algorithms to work. With the algorithms, I also used the help of one of the kids at my job. Through it all I had finally learned how to solve white “correctly” and it was time to move on to the next step.
In this week my dog decided that she was bored and that my 2×2 would be the perfect chew toy. So, I had no choice but to move on and go onto the 3×3. Therefore, I began the first steps of the 3×3 Rubik’s cube!
In this post, I completed the white side of the 3×3. And had done it “correctly”. I learned this process from the kids at my job. They had been very helpful through the entirety of the learning process.
This week I learned the next 2 steps in how to solve the 3×3. These were how to begin solving the middle layer. Which was essentially 2 steps, as you had to learn how to use both hands in this step.
On this week I began the last final steps of the 3×3. I figured out how to solve the middle layer, and create the “white daisy” and begin learning how to solve the white side of the cube. and finally finished the cube!
I hope you all enjoyed reading about my journey as much as I enjoyed going through this journey. I am thankful I took the time to learn how to solve the cubes, rather than use YouTube, as I feel it deepened my learning capabilities. I am thankful I did this course and that it pushed me to do something I had never done or even thought of doing before.
I enjoyed this course, and am grateful to Katia for a wonderful semester and an always interesting class, even if they were night classes!