there are more ways to learn and comprehend problem solving rather than just reading it
in a book or hearing it from your teacher's mouth while sure you still need a mixture of
those core ingredients but a pinch of chemical x can change your entire perspective the daydream
usually defined as a series of pleasant thoughts that distract one's attention from the present
but what if that power of distraction aids in your quest for knowledge aids in your problem solving
and aids in well almost any situation you may be facing today i will try to do the impossible help
create a video to help you understand daydreaming pickles declassified video survival guide results
may vary alright so one of my favorite live action shows growing up was ned's declassified
school survival guide a wacky show about a couple of middle schoolers trying to navigate these next
several years of school as best as they can while ned goes over the do's and don'ts of it all the
show was an amalgamation of a lot of different things from teaching you real life tips for the
most part that actually could help you out with your own school and life experiences to a pesky
weasel that the janitor can't catch it never focused on being this regular kid's dealing with
school show instead it opts for a more surreal version of the kids dealing with school a more
daydream-like aspect of the day-in-the-life format you take equal parts real and grounded as much
as possible to our known reality and apply enough fantastical scenarios in situations that culminate
in this effect that's staring out of the window while the teacher's talking or overthinking how
you would speak to someone you're nervous to speak to at the moment what a possible version of school
these kids are going through rather than just from the lens of the viewer so knowing that the show
focuses on these grander more out there concepts you can see clearly how weird the show can end up
getting whether it's just for a quick visual gag or something funny with the editing the show was
never afraid to play around with how the story could be told and here's where this all starts
tying together the season 1 episode daydreaming and gym an episode literally focusing on the
aspect of a kid daydreaming to help them get by whatever situation they are in along with that
adding in some surprise cameos that cement this weirder episode of the show into my memory banks
so let's talk about why this episode was weird why it's still one i think about to this day and
why it brings up a conversation about daydreaming almost perfectly so the episode starts off with
loomer the school bully and his pals messing with susie crabgrass when ned cookie and mose come in
to save the day in this epic showdown of mid-2000s kids television video editing after saving the
day the teacher mr sweeney wakes ned up before he gets to kiss susie but if you're a daydreamer like
me learn from my mistake and don't be too obvious teachers hate the staring out the window daydream
way too obvious try your best to stare at an educational item in the front of the class
that way you can cover yourself if you get nailed so there you go that's the first tip
given about daydreaming and kind of discussing how well teachers kind of hate that looking out
of the window thing and that's pretty true i should know myself in the window play out this
symbiotic relationship where the window became the screen and my mind was the projector what kind of
pseudo-pretentious writing was that back on track the show started off with a hypothetical situation
daydream a boy crushing on a girl he likes and gets to save her from danger this is the personal
circumstance daydream a more common daydream when you're not faced with the task at hand juxtaposed
to a later setup in the show we will get to mr sweeney ends up holding the kids during lunch
since they spent all class daydreaming and their only way out is to answer why the words water
wolf and trapdoor are written together and the only hint that is given is that you can find the
answer somewhere in the classroom so what does ned do best well he daydreams himself as a spy trying
to help all the students get out of class to get lunch and eat pizza leading into the same example
before except now it's leading into the rising action of the show the plot not moving beyond
this real time moment we see ned use a heightened version of himself and more exaggerated looks of
the classmates and teachers around him to fully immerse himself in what's going on you're stuck
with the task solve the riddle free the class be the hero simple but how do we arrive at that
goal this in his brain puts him outside of the class in his daydream trying to get back inside
of the class not only to just rescue the students from the scenario that's going on as the secret
agent but he has to power through and understand that the answer is in the classroom and this is
how his brain is visualizing trying to understand that let's continue to follow and probably one of
the coolest things i've witnessed and was jealous of as a kid was the fact that ned and mo's got to
drive a sweet new whip through the halls of the school which they totally aren't really driving
it was being pulled and the hallways were also green screened in to make it show that it was
moving a lot from all the front view shots but hey still pretty cool and i'm mad that i
wasn't born as devon workhizer we then cut back out of the daydream to hear mr sweeney tell ned
that you will never freed the class for lunch by daydreaming this i feel is important to the show
it's something that resonates with me something i was scolded by teachers for growing up as i would
daydream in class often and i'll get back into my own personal connection more later now mr sweeney
is offering the next hint to help the students in solving the riddle the answer is in this room
and it spins allowing ned to take in more context when i originally stated earlier we still need
some guidance of thought to drive the daydream that still holds true by paying attention to the
key parts and then applying your own mind and how it puts things together you're able to formulate
the bigger picture here we get an example of how your brain could work with the example of how
ned's brain is working he very specifically says i wish there was a way into that room and then
seemingly out of nowhere the fairly oddparents cosmo and wanda show up to help secret agent ned
this whole bit of the mixing of an animated show into a show taking place within a more realistic
setting was first weird due to the shock of the surprise cameo but second ingenious so let's break
it down word association how does that play out for example i say pokemon you may think pikachu
or if i say skate you'd probably say bored in most cases let's try this if i say cat you might say
dog whether it's because you associated both as domesticated animals or because you're a nostalgia
driven person fueled by 90s animation maybe you respond with fish maybe due to you're just hungry
or possibly your favorite meal because your father used to fish with you when you were young would
you still arrive at the same answer for different reasons or something completely different due to
your own experiences but let's pull back to what he said i wish then the next moment the fairly
odd parrots show up the obvious who wants to be a millionaire answer here is b easy word association
wish that translated into cosmo and wanda they are fairies and they grant wishes but to look deeper
in this because why shouldn't we at this point we can associate the age of ned in middle school the
prime age to be watching cartoons on nickelodeon ned most likely watches the fairly oddparents as
at the time it was one of the most popular shows from nickelodeon aside from spongebob he clearly
knows who they are when referring to them and treats them in his head just like they would
act within the cartoon itself those context clues can add up and justify that assumption at least
to make it all make sense ned's subconsciousness took parts of the real world the important parts
and combined it with the fantasies within his head thus allowing the mind to navigate a unique
pathway to work through his situation alright let's digest this a bit easier for a bit he is
able to use one wish to help him in his journey in solving this riddle he chooses to get himself
inside of the classroom to in a sense face the problem head on to be where the actual answer
could come from he then finds out that he could have wished for the answer because he could have
wished for anything but this was smart here though it's subtle but well done ned couldn't
have got the correct answer even if he wished it because he himself doesn't know the answer
the fairies are in his mind using his knowledge they could help him focus on the problem better
create pathways to get him closer to the answer but they cannot give him the answer because he and
himself does not know it we visit the students asking sweeney for another hint so he obliged
and you can easily find it on the web you can easily find it on the web more word association
coming up soon as ned visualizes sweeney as this evil villain sweeney sprays a webbing onto ned
sticking him against the wall something maybe a super powered villain like a marvel or dc movie
would have another thing someone ned's age could definitely heavily be into the web power based on
ned using the clue given and used association to think of a spider web which doubles as a trap for
the secret agent that he could get caught in it's kind of heavily layered like an onion or ned then
takes all these context clues the words water wolf and trapdoor are related by the words spinning
and web and can be found within this classroom and then it hits him he looks around the room
sees the different animals bugs insects and arachnids labeled on the wall and blurts out he
gets everyone's attention sweeney at the ready to laugh at whatever guess was coming from his mouth
ned says this those words are together because they're all spiders and sweeney responds with
that's right and just like that he frees the class gets his my hero from susie that he's
been always daydreaming about he leans in for the kiss and is rejected as sometimes the daydreams
are nothing more than that and that's also pretty important to see because sometimes it's not always
just going to be there to help or solve anything for you every single time sometimes some of your
thoughts are just thoughts they're fantasy and there's nothing more than that but i like how ned
says it best daydreaming is more than taking a field trip in your heads it's a way your brain
figures out problems and comes up with solutions to stuff it's how inventors invent it's how
scientists do science and it's how new ideas are born sometimes daydream is exactly what you need
it's essentially you helping you from a deeper subconscious state sometimes it can exactly
correlate with something you are dealing with a way for you to work out something you weren't
cognizant of trying to work out now let me try and clarify this do i think that this
episode of the show was written to be this deep most likely not it for sure has more to do with
how i perceive this episode and take away from it what i feel it tells me and who knows maybe
the writers of this episode wrote this under the guise of their own daydreams leading them
to writing the script so effectively thought provoking that even they didn't understand
how diligently it was written but maybe everything i said here was all just a little
too deep i mean how do you perceive my explanation was this all the result of another daydream
the final tip being that yes a daydream can be exactly what you need to help solve problems or
situations you are having to deal with which is pretty incredible to see that being shown and
taught within a kid's show i swear all my life i was told daydreaming was detrimental to my
learning capabilities but ned's declassified told me that i'm using the power of my mind
to come up with the solutions to my situations i literally would have teachers say all the time
hey are you even listening what did i just say and i would always reply back with exactly what they
said or what they were teaching every time there was a parent-teacher conference that needed to
happen the teacher would tell my parents yeah he does know his stuff and he does well on the test
but i never feel he's giving me his full attention well hey miss teacher lady sometimes kids learn
differently some people need to pay attention to learn some learn better in unconventional ways
like daydreaming to help comprehend the task given it's beautiful it's creative and it's something
that shouldn't be glossed over as oh they aren't paying attention as that always isn't the case
for some it is and for some it's not that's the beauty of the human mind the how the brain
works and operates i appreciate ned's declassified for always willing to give relatable tips to its
audience and not always sugarcoat everything most times they made sure not to just give us the bring
an extra pen type tip they're willing to speak to the kid at the time the real stuff we were dealing
with at school like the show even showed you how to deal with rumors and how they can hurt people
and how they travel and while that may not be the most original concept it's about how they
executed it and how well done it was going for an interesting way to break the rumor
rather than trying to plead the truth because every solution doesn't always just have one way to
answer it now the second part of the daydreaming episode is called jim and it deals with the trio
in gym class when the majority of them are not athletic it's another fun episode but for sure
not weird like daydreaming as well as not the focus of this video and that's also just to show
that in only 11 minutes half of the full show was able to portray daydreaming so beautifully overall
ned's declassified school survival guide was not just a great show but a goofy one as well in the
best way possible it crossed into a new and weird way of storytelling for the exact age audience
to resonate with giving those who like myself often daydream during school not just taking and
perceiving the world in front of me but also the beauty in creativity and how we all understand it
the show understood me how my brain operates and offers a look through a third person perspective
i honestly have so much more to say about this show about other episodes within the series i mean
why why is fred savage here but we'll just leave it at that for today what are your takeaways from
the show with episodes like this episodes that allow for a more broader discussion let me know
all that in the comments down below hit the like button subscribe and hit the bell next to it to
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real movie with my friend nerd nostalgic there's a bunch of awesome people on board check out that
video for way more details thank you so much for watching and i'll catch up with you next time