How not to learn origami

Confessions of a bad origami student

You've probably seen me at BOS origami conventions. I'm the fat guy with the glasses and the hat, and I'm asking you to help me with a move that I've missed in an origami class.

I'm writing this article to work out why I've been struggling, because despite my experiences at origami classes, I'm actually a moderately capable folder. Give me a diagram and I'll invariably learn how to fold the model. The result may look like it's been sat on, but all the correct folds will be there in the right order, and I'll regard that as a success.

Reasons for failing

So why am I such a bad student? It certainly isn't because of the quality of the teaching, which is invariably terrific.

I think there are two main reasons:

The time pressure

I'm not the fastest of thinkers, and although I have a decent IQ, I've been known to do badly at aptitude tests. Give me a problem that a smart person can solve in three minutes and I'll probably fail. Give me one that they can solve in a day, and I stand an excellent chance of completing it within a couple of hours. Give me a problem which most people would struggle with, and there's a real possibility that I'll come up with at least a partial solution.

Origami classes are a race, and the time pressures on both the students and the teachers are enormous. If a student misses a couple of folds, it can be almost impossible for them to catch up.

Supposing a model requires twenty steps in order to complete. If the class lasts an hour and starts precisely on time, the teacher has just sixty minutes to teach the model, which means that they've a maximum of three minutes to cover each step. If the class has ten people, the teacher can spare no more than 30 seconds to help each of the students with that step. If the teacher can't keep on schedule, which might happen if one or more of the students are out of their depth, they won't have enough time to explain all the folds, so the class will end without anyone completing the model. I've been in classes where this has happened and it's always a sad experience.

It sounds like a nightmare, but thankfully, the students will take up some of the teaching burden, as once they've mastered a fold, they'll share that knowledge with the people alongside them. Indeed, that's one of the joys of attending these classes, because you can take real pleasure in explaining a tricky fold to one of your fellow students, and it's always nice to receive assistance if you're struggling. After the teacher has demonstrated a step, the knowledge of that step will ripple through the class, allowing the teacher to spend their time on the failing students.

The inability to see the moves

For me, origami classes are particularly difficult because I don't have great eyesight, and I'm therefore always fighting to see what the teacher is doing. It's well known that that it's hard to teach origami because the teacher's perspective is different from the students, as the teacher sees the front of the paper and the student sees the back. However, even if the teacher understands this and tries to compensate, it's often very hard to see the move that the teacher is describing. A simple "fold point A to point B", which would be trivial to understand on a diagram becomes a lot harder when the student can't see the actual points in the paper. If the class is large, only a few students will be in full view of the teacher, and if the folds are non-obvious, it can be difficult for the teacher to show how they work without having to walk around the entire class and repeat the move in front of each student in turn.

Solutions?

If you're a student, you should never forget that origami classes are a group activity and they're taught by unpaid volunteers who are donating  the time that they'd otherwise be spending meeting their friends at the convention. You don't have a guaranteed right to walk out of the class with a completed model and you don't have the right to complain if that doesn't happen. If you're attending a class because you want to expand your skills and try something new, there's a perfectly good chance that you'll fail, and providing you fail in a way that doesn't spoil the experience for the rest of the class, that's fine.

What to do if you're a failing student

Since I've a lot of experience with failing, I've developed a number of strategies for dealing with these kinds of situations.

Always be prepared to walk away

If I'm attending a class and it's immediately obvious that I'm completely out of my depth, I'll pick up my bag, say a few words of apologies to the teacher and leave with as little fuss as possible. It doesn't happen often, but sometimes it's the best way of dealing with the situation without wasting everybody's time. No one will mind.

Give up gracefully

If I spent too much time struggling with a fold and miss the next few steps, I may come to the conclusion that I won't be able to catch up without interrupting my fellow folders or using up too much of the teacher's time. In this situation, I'll put down the partially finished model, stop folding and watch the teacher's explanations, refusing all efforts to help. I'll spent the class making mental notes so that I can hopefully relearn the model at a later date. If I'm lucky, the teacher might even give me their completed model at the end, which will give me a head start when I'm trying again. If not, I can put my unfinished model away and check the Internet later to see if I can find any diagrams or video instructions. There are a couple of occasions where I've failed to learn the model in the class, discovered the folding procedure on the Internet, and completed the unfinished model when I got home. Some of those models turned out to be my all time favourites.

How to make things easier if you're a teacher

Deal with the time pressures

If you're a teacher, you always need to be aware of the time pressure. The aim of the class is to teach the model to the majority of students, so if you're running out of time, you may have to refuse help to a student who's totally lost. You can console them by offering to teach them the model on a one-to-one basis after the class. You can also offer to give the student a link to a diagram or video later, or give them your completed model so that they can reverse engineer it.

Provide examples

I've only seen this rarely, but if the teacher has enough time to prepare, it's helpful if they fold a number of models before the class so that they can be passed around to show the students what the finished model is supposed to look like. This can be fantastically useful,  as it's easy for the students to get lost in a sea of folds without any idea of what they're actually trying to achieve. If the teacher has more time, they can provide examples of partially completed models which will show off the end results of particularly tricky folding sequences. If the students could just pick up an example and play with the folds, they'd have no need to ask the teacher for a demonstration, and once a few folders have mastered the technique, the knowledge will rapidly spread through the class.

How to make things easier if you're a convention organizer

Although I've been a member of the BOS for several years, I've never found the time to contribute as much to the society as I should, and I've always been hugely grateful to the organizers and volunteers who work so hard to make the conventions a success. A few years ago, I spent a bit of time corresponding with Mark Bolitho about the possibility of improving the difficulty ratings shown alongside the models that would be taught at conventions. We never came to any firm conclusions, because it turned out to be impossibly hard to explain why a particular model was harder to fold than another. However, at the risk of receiving justified abuse from hard-working convention organizers, I'd humbly make the following suggestion.

Provide the number of steps used to create the model

I know this information isn't always going to be available, and it's hard enough to ensure that there are examples of the models on the convention boards, but I do think it would be handy if the students could have an idea of the number of steps required to complete the model. In the case of a tessellation, the number might be pretty large, as a 32x32 grid requires 62 folds before the model can be even started, but an experienced tessellation folder will understand that, and a novice who'd never folded a tessellation before and who would struggle to complete the model, might be encouraged to try something a little simpler instead. I'm not arguing that the number of folds has a direct connection with the model's complexity, but I still think it gives a good indication of whether it's going to be easy or hard to complete.

Conclusion

I attend origami conventions to meet fellow folders, and providing I can do that, I'm never too bothered if I fail to complete the odd model. If the model captures my interest, I'll invariably return to it later, often gaining a deeper insight into how it's put together. It's fun to take the odd risk and fold something completely different, and if failure is always an option, that's no big deal. Providing I enjoy the class and don't spoil it for other students, I don't really care.