Semester Reflection
Word count: 908
Overall, this semester has been really hectic for me. I dealt with a lot of personal issues that unfortunately affected my school. A month into the semester I had to move out of my off-campus apartment and back on to campus due to roommate problems. Those roommates made my life miserable and my attempts to find sublets a horrible experience. I’m not going to go into details, but I dealt with a lot, way more than a full-time college student should have. I even had to drop one of my courses in early October, and would probably drop another one if I still could. This course was pretty much the only one that I thoroughly enjoyed and stayed on top of (even though I still turned blogs in late), the rest of my courses are still dragging me down much worse. But this course was so different than any other I’ve taken during my three years here at Rutgers. I love social media and am often tweeting, Instagramming, or snapchatting things and in a way, I felt like keeping up with this blog was similar to that, just much longer. A lot of the blogs were just my thoughts, and the prompts were pretty broad so I didn’t have to follow a specific format or question, and I appreciated that. It’s a nice change from the writing I usually do in classes. I never looked at myself as a writer before this class since the only time I wrote was for papers or on social media (if that even counts), but now, I see myself a little bit more as a writer. I think I’ve improved on descriptive writing, which is something I know I’ve struggled with all my life. I liked the blog where we had to pick a painting and write a story about it. The piece I wrote is one that I am really proud of, probably for one of the first times in my life. I’m not confident when it comes to fictional stories, poetry, or visual writing, so I was happy with what I came up with for my blog. Aimee even brought it up in class, which really boosted my confidence in writing. I feel like I’ve improved on those types of writing throughout the semester, and I want to continue improving even after this course ends.
I spend a lot of time on the computer so I felt like I had a pretty good understanding of the multimedia we used in class. I’ve made gifs before, and played around with Garage Band and iMovie but never actually made anything with them before. I am now really comfortable with iMovie, especially after this final video project. I learned different settings and menu options to help make the video smoother or flow better. Although Alexandra did most of the editing for the Podcast, I learned a lot by watching her edit it. Speaking of the podcast, that is definitely in my top 5 favorite projects I’ve done in college. I never even listened to a podcast prior to this class, so having to make my own seemed nearly impossible. It was hard to come up with a plotline, characters, and dialogue knowing we would have to turn it into a real thing. I worried a lot about how to execute this project, I think Alexandra did a little bit, too. But I am so proud of our podcast. It’s something I can have for the rest of life, and show people. I immediately made my mom listen to it because I was that proud of it! I didn’t think I would ever create my own podcast in my life so that’s really cool.
I still would like to learn how to be a better writer, but I think that just comes with practice. I googled writing prompts to see what showed up, and I found this website, which has 365 different writing prompts to do. I’m going to try and do this next year and see how far I get. Even if I do one a week instead of one a day, I’ll still be getting practice and hopefully improve my writing. Writing down my thoughts and opinions are easy, it’s the creative and fictional pieces that challenge me so I need to focus on those more. I would like to learn more about creating digital art, like fun and creative gifs using real pictures I took. I would also like to create more movies. I really love doing makeup so maybe I’ll get around to creating a makeup tutorial video using iMovie since I’m more comfortable with it.
To conclude, I genuinely liked this course and the assignments that we had to do. They were creative and definitely challenged me to think and do things beyond my comfort zone. I’m glad I have what I wrote and created for the rest of my life to look back on. I’m not completely done with my final video yet, but so far, it’s a project I’m already proud of. It started out too general but I focused it down on a really important topic that I think everyone cares about, or at least should; the Holocaust and my visit to the Dachau Concentration Camp. I think the final edit will turn out great and I’m excited for you guys to see it and hopefully learns something you didn’t previously know about the Holocaust.
Overall, this semester has been really hectic for me. I dealt with a lot of personal issues that unfortunately affected my school. A month into the semester I had to move out of my off-campus apartment and back on to campus due to roommate problems. Those roommates made my life miserable and my attempts to find sublets a horrible experience. I’m not going to go into details, but I dealt with a lot, way more than a full-time college student should have. I even had to drop one of my courses in early October, and would probably drop another one if I still could. This course was pretty much the only one that I thoroughly enjoyed and stayed on top of (even though I still turned blogs in late), the rest of my courses are still dragging me down much worse. But this course was so different than any other I’ve taken during my three years here at Rutgers. I love social media and am often tweeting, Instagramming, or snapchatting things and in a way, I felt like keeping up with this blog was similar to that, just much longer. A lot of the blogs were just my thoughts, and the prompts were pretty broad so I didn’t have to follow a specific format or question, and I appreciated that. It’s a nice change from the writing I usually do in classes. I never looked at myself as a writer before this class since the only time I wrote was for papers or on social media (if that even counts), but now, I see myself a little bit more as a writer. I think I’ve improved on descriptive writing, which is something I know I’ve struggled with all my life. I liked the blog where we had to pick a painting and write a story about it. The piece I wrote is one that I am really proud of, probably for one of the first times in my life. I’m not confident when it comes to fictional stories, poetry, or visual writing, so I was happy with what I came up with for my blog. Aimee even brought it up in class, which really boosted my confidence in writing. I feel like I’ve improved on those types of writing throughout the semester, and I want to continue improving even after this course ends.
I spend a lot of time on the computer so I felt like I had a pretty good understanding of the multimedia we used in class. I’ve made gifs before, and played around with Garage Band and iMovie but never actually made anything with them before. I am now really comfortable with iMovie, especially after this final video project. I learned different settings and menu options to help make the video smoother or flow better. Although Alexandra did most of the editing for the Podcast, I learned a lot by watching her edit it. Speaking of the podcast, that is definitely in my top 5 favorite projects I’ve done in college. I never even listened to a podcast prior to this class, so having to make my own seemed nearly impossible. It was hard to come up with a plotline, characters, and dialogue knowing we would have to turn it into a real thing. I worried a lot about how to execute this project, I think Alexandra did a little bit, too. But I am so proud of our podcast. It’s something I can have for the rest of life, and show people. I immediately made my mom listen to it because I was that proud of it! I didn’t think I would ever create my own podcast in my life so that’s really cool.
I still would like to learn how to be a better writer, but I think that just comes with practice. I googled writing prompts to see what showed up, and I found this website, which has 365 different writing prompts to do. I’m going to try and do this next year and see how far I get. Even if I do one a week instead of one a day, I’ll still be getting practice and hopefully improve my writing. Writing down my thoughts and opinions are easy, it’s the creative and fictional pieces that challenge me so I need to focus on those more. I would like to learn more about creating digital art, like fun and creative gifs using real pictures I took. I would also like to create more movies. I really love doing makeup so maybe I’ll get around to creating a makeup tutorial video using iMovie since I’m more comfortable with it.
To conclude, I genuinely liked this course and the assignments that we had to do. They were creative and definitely challenged me to think and do things beyond my comfort zone. I’m glad I have what I wrote and created for the rest of my life to look back on. I’m not completely done with my final video yet, but so far, it’s a project I’m already proud of. It started out too general but I focused it down on a really important topic that I think everyone cares about, or at least should; the Holocaust and my visit to the Dachau Concentration Camp. I think the final edit will turn out great and I’m excited for you guys to see it and hopefully learns something you didn’t previously know about the Holocaust.
Dear Savannah,
ReplyDeleteEven though you were struggling personally during this semester, you still managed to keep an upbeat attitude, to keep in communication with me, and to produce some really incredible work. I hope you will continue to think of yourself as a writer, because you ARE. You have a natural ability to put words on a page in a way that is instantly relatable to the reader--that means that you have a strong voice, and so my hope is that you will trust that voice and give it more opportunity to grow stronger, possibly by keeping up this blog or starting another platform. I appreciate the link you included here to the writing prompts, and I want you to notify my immediately when you post your first make-up blog. Do it!! You have so much to offer, and your voice is important.
Savannah
ReplyDeleteYour blog is truly put together in a very artistic manner. I've struggles with different issues this semester so I can understand how situations like tat can effect someones college presence. With that in mind what you did was to take your energy and focused it on doing great work on your blog. I wish you all the best in your future.