Journal-Style Blog Post: Reflections
I would like to take a moment to reflect back on my experience in Composing Digital Media thus far, and comment on some aspects of my journey that I find frustrating, and others that I find incredibly rewarding.
Frustrations
The crash-course style of this course is necessary, but also a little frustrating. This is not to say that I think the course needs re-structuring—I simply find it difficult sometimes to keep up with the pacing. I sometimes am frustrated with myself in not understanding all the intricacies of each program or computer language, and although I am clearly a beginner, I become irritated that things don’t come easier to me.
Past Experiences
I like that this course pulls on things that I have done in the past. As I mentioned above, a lot of the aspects of the class fulfill my desire to create art, but they also remind me of skills I used in high school. I spent a lot of time on garage band, editing projects for AP courses in high school (like this funny video I helped to make for AP Spanish). I especially look forward to attempting to revive my interest in audio editing in the future of this class.
In the interest of entertainment, here’s an embarrassing photo of my senior year AP United States History class dressed up before we filmed (and edited) our videos about life during the Civil War era. I spent a lot of time on garageband for this project, but unfortunately don’t have the final video on hand.
College Regrets
This course has exposed some of my regrets in regard to the closing window of my college career. I was always told that art was an impractical career—that doing creative work was not going to get me a job, and that I would be poor and unfulfilled. I therefore turned away from my love of art (minoring in Studio Arts instead of majoring) and pursued a major and many certificates in writing and literature. Although I love my chosen path, I regret not knowing until recently that working with digital media is an art form in of itself—and a desirable, marketable, useful, one at that. Photoshop fulfills my creative needs in a similar way to painting. Audio editing is precise in the same way as drawing. My regret is not pursuing a digital media certificate, and not giving myself an opportunity to work in the art field with an applicable certification.
Rewards!
Regardless of my regrets, I am so glad that this class gave me the opportunity to work with so many useful programs. I can now mark down that I have experience in a number of different programs that employers are looking for. If I was going to take a digital media course, this was the right one to pick. The crash course structure is just what I needed in this phase of my college career, as I’m getting as much information into the shortest period of time.
Rikki Li
Arielle,
These are some great reflections, and I especially agree with you on regretting not pursuing something more with digital media during my college career. It’s a shame that alternate forms of creative expression and storytelling (such as podcasts, digital art, and etc.) are not as widely talked about as, say, more traditional methods such as writing and drawing. It’s good though that you can say you have academic experience in these fields now due to this class!