Reflections on Mitou Junior

This article is part of the Mitou Junior Advent Calendar.

Long time no see — I’m Soumame (https://tokumaru.work/ja). I attended an Australian international school in Malaysia and graduated at the end of November. With 2024 almost over, I’ve been looking back on what I did this year.

Today I want to casually review the Mitou Junior creator support program I finished in November — from how I got started to how it went. If you don’t know about Mitou Junior, please check the website.

未踏ジュニア - 小中高生クリエータ支援プログラム

独創的なアイデアを持つ小中高生クリエータに対し、各界で活躍するメンターやその他専門家による指導、また最大50万円の開発資金の援助を行います。

jr.mitou.org

It started with watching the Mitou Junior results presentation

My reason for applying to Mitou Junior goes back more than two years. In November 2022 I went to see the results presentation with a friend I had just met that day.

At the presentation, creators who had been selected for Mitou Junior presented what they had made. To be honest, all I remember is that everyone said really difficult things and I just thought, “Wow, there are so many geniuses gathered here — amazing. Someone like me…”. Each project was at a level I couldn’t believe middle or high school students came up with, so I was just astonished. My friend who came with me seemed to understand a lot and chatted happily, and I remember thinking that. That was my rather superficial impression at the time.

Applying for the first time

After that, when I was a second-year high school student I applied to Mitou Junior together with a friend. I didn’t have any coding skills back then, but I submitted a spur-of-the-moment app idea anyway. The proposal was so rough and impractical that it didn’t even pass the document screening — it was rejected. I thought, “Well, I guess that’s to be expected.”

However, the friend who submitted with me was selected, and watching them progress with the project made me feel anxious: there are people relentlessly pursuing what they want to do, and I’m just studying half-heartedly at school — if I keep this up, even if I have things I want to do, I might not be able to make anything happen.

In fact, I had a lot of things I wanted to build back then, but there were many things I couldn’t build because I didn’t have coding skills. I felt I probably couldn’t aim as high as those people, so I thought I’d at least study hard in school so I could get into a university like everyone suggested.

The year that followed

That said, I went to an international school using the Australian curriculum, so I was supposed to study many school subjects there and get good grades. I had been at that school since winter of first year junior high, so because I was late in acquiring the language, I needed to study properly.

But I was told I was easily distracted and couldn’t concentrate when uninterested, so I didn’t put much effort into schoolwork, and my grades were around the Australian average. I spent most of my time playing Minecraft instead of studying. Around that time I also started to enjoy making things.

Because I used English all day, I became able to speak it casually, but the English I learned was for communication, not the academic English that appears on school tests. Naturally, my English test scores weren’t great either. Since I was technically studying abroad, people kept telling me to study properly.

All about what I like

So in my second year of high school I didn’t study much and mostly did what I enjoyed: making projects with others, building websites, tutoring kids in basic programming as a part-time job — I spent time accumulating various experiences. Fortunately, there were many kind people around me who provided learning opportunities. I stopped worrying much about grades and just pursued what I liked. People criticized me a lot for that, but looking back, the knowledge I gained during that time has ended up being useful.

Using the web development skills I picked up while playing around for about a year, I even created a site to host programming teaching materials using Minecraft. (This was the precursor to the project that was later selected by Mitou Junior.)

Time to study after all

However, my last report card before promotion was the worst. For the first time I realized that if you don’t study, your grades fall. I panicked and decided to stop making websites and start studying properly.

Unusually, I stuck to it, and my grades recovered steadily. Panic really helps sometimes. I woke up at 6:30, went to school, came home at 4, studied, ate, and slept — not an extreme routine, but consistent. After three or four months my grades became decent again, and I think I reached a level where I could reasonably aim for international universities.

I made up my mind!

A turning point

But an incredible email arrived for the person who had just decided to study. The half-finished project I had applied with on a whim was selected by Mitou Junior.

Compared to the project I had applied with last year, this one had actually had some work done on it, it was fairly practical, and technically it seemed doable even to me. It was also a project in the education field that I really wanted to work on, so I think that attracted the attention of the mentors. I was genuinely happy when it got selected.

I don’t really know why I applied while I had decided to study, but I think the nagging question “Is this really the right thing to do?” that kept lingering in my mind while studying pushed me to apply. Maybe a part of me didn’t want to just do schoolwork… (Or you could say that the things I wanted to learn weren’t available at school.)

At the same time, I had anxieties like Can I actually do this? What will happen to my schoolwork? I was unsure whether it was worth devoting my last year of high school to this, so I thought about whether to continue for a while.

Feeling crushed by those around me

In the end I chose to proceed and focused on building the app.

“If I go back to studying at school I’ll always be left with regret in the back of my mind. There are people who can help me, so I should focus on what I want to do.”

I told myself that and studied programming obsessively. People around me had already built things and had technical skills, while this was my first app, so I felt very uneasy. Of course I already had an idea of what I wanted to make and a plan, but I kept asking myself whether it was within my abilities and whether it was the right approach. Meanwhile, my school grades visibly started to drop, which was terrifying.

On the other hand, Mitou Junior has systems such as recommendation slots for school applications, so early on I moved from thinking “If this fails, I’m done” to a slightly more resigned — or rather, optimistic — “Even if my grades drop a bit, maybe it’ll work out somehow.” That eased some of my anxiety.

Thinking “maybe it’ll be okay” might not be the best mindset since things could also go badly, but it’s better than being paralyzed by excessive anxiety…

The result

After a year of exploration and six months of study and creation through Mitou Junior, I finished the program and was certified as a Super Creator. For me, though, this is a starting line — what’s important now is how I can change myself and the world from here. Separately, I was also able to win App Koshien with this software. I’ve never been first at anything before, so that was really exciting, but even more than winning, what made me happiest was that there were people who evaluated me positively.

The software I presented, called “TutoriaLLM”, is a self-hosted application that uses AI to help children learn programming and helps teachers create teaching materials.

I’m developing it with help from many people around the world, so I plan to keep working on it at least until those people abandon me. The software is open source, but I’m also considering commercial use, and I hope to deploy the app in real-world, profit-generating settings in the future.

TutoriaLLMへようこそ

Scratchのようなブロックプログラミングのチュートリアルを簡単に作成し、AIを利用して提供することができるセルフホスト型のソフトウェアです。

tutoriallm.com

Closing thoughts

Between us, my grades did drop a lot, so I don’t know if spending my last year of high school this way was the right decision. However, fortunately, there were many people around me who evaluated and supported me, and thanks to them I gained a lot. Of course school study is important, but I think it’s not necessarily bad for people like me to exist in the world. I don’t think anything I did was wasted; things that look useless sometimes turn out to be useful (whether it’s efficient is another matter).

After finishing school, I struggled a lot with what path to take. Seeing so many different worlds made me question what I once took for granted — that I would obviously go to university. Is that really necessary for me? (As a result, I’m still considering university.)

I want to thank Nishio-san and everyone who mentored me at Mitou Junior, those who did user testing, and everyone who contributed to the software — I couldn’t have done this without you. Thank you!

Promotion

If you’d like, check out the website and follow me on social media:

得丸 創生

そうまめというニックネームでも活動しています。

tokumaru.work