Project 13
An eight-year project inspired by my loves for learning and the music of Taylor Swift.
The Beginning
During a chance encounter in July 2017, I met a Columbia University professor at a gathering in Shenzhen. Up to that point, I had groomed myself to be a Swiftie. I latched on to her growing popularity from the days of her first album. I also love learning, with a fondness for effective and innovative pedagogy. So, my nine-year-old fearless brain simply asked the professor if he could teach his courses using Taylor’s songs as lessons. He smilingly replied that he would consider. I planted the seed that day for a self-guided mission to bring Taylor Swift into a college classroom.
The Brainstorming
What might have seemed like a crazy idea took much effort to keep alive. Over the next three years, I would spend my free time gathering and studying all of Taylor’s song lyrics. I would find connections among her songs to her life and other concepts. I sent monthly emails to the professor with hopes that he would agree with my ideas. There were reputations at stake, but I had a conviction that my vision would strenghen them.
The Greenlight
The breakthrough came during the global pandemic in 2020. As with many, I had some newfound time to explore the role of education. With the reimagining of an existing data science course at Columbia, I was given the approval to move forward with my plans. This project was aptly named Project 13. My hopes for a Taylor-focused college course were about to be realized. There was no chance I was going to let this light turn red.
The Response
The fall of 2022 was the first rendition of the revamped course APAN 5310. The blank space in the course syllabus was filled with the instructional elements of my idea hatched five years prior. I was halfway across the world from the Columbia campus, but I followed the course virtually. Perhaps experimental in nature, I viewed the course as eagerly as any enrolled student did. My wildest dreams were somehow no longer that. I postively influenced the learning of hundreds of college students by fusing together two of my loves.
The Reflection
There were plenty of moments in this project’s timeline where it could have ended. If I had not persevered in keeping contact with the professor or in building Swiftie learning modules, I might not have this narrative to tell. My ultimate satisfaction came when the professor shared with me excerpts (see some of them below) from his students’ course reviews. Just as Taylor is not done creating, I will not stop doing what I do.
"the one and ONLY course I will remember 50 years from now"
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"the best decision of my college career has been to take this course"
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"I was so engaged with the course's Taylor Swift themed content that I forgot this was a course"
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"the one and ONLY course I will remember 50 years from now" 〰️ "the best decision of my college career has been to take this course" 〰️ "I was so engaged with the course's Taylor Swift themed content that I forgot this was a course" 〰️
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