Before I go into describing my experience with this course, I would just like to say that it is probably one of my favorite classes I have taken so far. It was perfect for the student who wants to learn outside of their major but doesn’t have enough will or courage to go to events or lectures on their own, or for the student who isn’t actively looking for these types of things to go to. AKA- it was perfect for me.
I found that through the events I attended there were several common threads but also still a variety of events so it kept things interesting. It seems like I went to several events that dealt with the LGBT community, and a few events dealing with the arts (poetry, music, dance...). Looking back I can probably make a connection from week to week from things I experienced and things I learned, not just connections from the topic at hand. I often found myself learning more about myself through these common threads because I didn’t realize these threads until closer towards the end of the semester.
At first I thought most of these events were illogical pertaining to the current work I am making and my current interests. But again, when I look back on the semester it has come to my attention that some of these topics of events are actually present in my work and do pertain to interests and social/political issues in the media right now. This was interesting to find out and reflect on, because sometimes I just make work and don’t have a lot of time to reflect back on a deeper meaning to the piece but now that I can connect topics from these events to my work I feel like it gives me a better understanding of my methods to making work/giving my work meaning. Going along with that, it too helped me to find out more about myself. I have been able to reign in my interests and focus on things I really want to put my time and creative vision into. Although this specifically helps me as an artist with my studies and personal work, I think it would still be beneficial for students of other majors to come to these epiphanies about themselves. It was a weird feeling, but rewarding and satisfying at the same time.
Some of the events, like mentioned above, I did not think had any correlation to who I am and what I am interested in. But to my surprise there were a few events that became more important to me than I first thought. Mainly the music related events became more important to me, but also the lectures and movies geared towards the LGBT community. I have always loved music and been amazed by people that make music, but until this class I have never related it to what I do personally with my art making. I was able to see that many different forms of art deal with certain concepts that are similar and there is a kind of rhythm and movement involved in making music that I also find myself doing when making photographs. It’s a beautiful thing to think about and realize, and I’m disappointed in myself for not thinking this deeply about my methods and processes before now. The LGBT events were also more important to me after the thought because I felt like I was able to relate better with some of my best friends who have had to go through some of the hardships that were brought further to the surface of my attention through these events. It also made me realize that everyone goes through some type of pain, judgment, hate, etc from other people and it could be a really wild and amazing thing if everyone was able to connect through this to help one another rather than oppress each other. I found myself getting pretty angered and heated during some of these events because I couldn’t believe how cruel some people in this world are, not that I was oblivious to it, but it was a different and eye opening experience to see it more “first-hand”, even if it was just through a video or lecture. Because of some of the strong emotions I felt during certain events, it really helped me to figure out the issues I find important in the world, and gave me time to think about how I can be proactive in changing things in my life or others for the better. I’m not sure if these things showed up in my work this semester, maybe if I reflect back on everything I produced I could see connections, but it’s hard to say now since I’m just now realizing some of these important factors from these events. I can say that it helped me with my work to be confident and make what I desire to make, not make something to please someone else. This was huge for me since I’m a very quiet and shy person, and I’m not sure if I would have gained some of this confidence without this course.
The two most unexpected events I went to were the ones on modern greek studies and the evolution of life histories in turtles. I thought I could really learn some awesome things with these events, while I might have learned a bit they weren’t nearly as rewarding to attend as my other events. They were out of my comfort zone though, which is why I would consider them unexpected. I have slight interest in greek studies and biology, so it wasn’t a total snooze fest to attend these but if I could do it over again I would most definitely choose different events to go to these weeks.
An event I would choose to go to over and over again would be the tesla coil concert. MY GOD was that amazing. It literally blew my mind. It brought me back to some of my high school roots of being a science and math nerd, and was a great way to spend a couple hours of my night rather than wasting it away on the couch watching a pointless television show. I wish the whole class could have attended this, it was so incredibly cool to experience and the atmosphere it made and crowd it drew... spectacular. I want to say they do this every year during the engineering open house week, so hopefully I remember this next year and check it out again. I probably didn’t learn much at this event, but like I said, it brought me back to who I am at heart: a nerd.
I cannot stress enough how much I enjoyed this course. It was completely different from most other classes I have taken. Definitely different from in-class courses I have taken rather than online courses. It was similar to other online courses in that it was kind of self-paced and our grades relied on our performance and meeting deadlines. I really enjoy this kind of structure rather than a typical lecture, taking notes. I feel like you learn more and polish some skills (like self-discipline) through online courses rather than normal classes. And especially with this mining the university course, you learned a lot about yourself. To me, these types of things are more important to get out of your college education than listening to a boring lecture and cramming for tests. Because I have experienced this course now, I most definitely think of my educational experience differently. I almost find certain things less stressful now because I am trying to find things from class to personally relate to that make it easier for me to comprehend and learn. I also find myself a lot more relaxed in classes and with my everyday tasks. I don’t know if that’s because I’m nearing the end of my college career and this comes naturally or if this course has taught me so much about myself I don’t find a formal education as necessary as before. I say this because I don’t think I’ve learned much about myself from other courses at this university that are taught formally, not that I think having an education is not beneficial. And from this point on I think I will continue to change my educational experience as I change - whereas before both of these changes weren’t correlated.
I have kind of mentioned this before, but I have been able to find comparisons and difference between the events I attended and my major. I don’t want to keep repeating myself, but I have found that more often than not I was able to find comparisons with the events I chose and my major than differences. These comparisons and differences might not be so straightforward, but they are there and I think it is important for myself and my future works that I have realized this.
I think I did attend a few of the events I posted, but more so I went to events other people posted. My personal schedule had some to do with this, because I would have liked to attend more than one or two events a week. I also didn’t always attend an event I found super interesting at first, due to scheduling- but I still always found a relevancy in the end. Looking back now, I’m almost glad I didn’t always go to the events I posted though, because this gave me room to grow and find out what my peers find interesting as well. I don’t think there was any one person whose event postings stuck out to me as “Oh, I have to go to this”, so I think there was a variety on my part of whose events I chose to go to. Everyone seemed to choose pretty neat events though to post, and like I said, there were times I wish I could have gone to more.
I know we had to document ourselves at the events and then write about them as apart of recognition that we actually went to an event, but sometimes I liked documenting the event more than actually going to the event. I use to write a lot when I was younger but strayed away from it in high school and college, so it was nice for me to be able to write my thoughts and feelings out again, even though I know most of the time they were just ramblings and didn’t make much sense to anyone else but myself. But I found that almost meditative. It also aided in my gain of confidence, because I knew other people from the class were going to be reading my posts, so I had to stop being afraid of what other people were going to think and just write out what I wanted to. In a way I found writing as documentation more important, but taking images was still important, especially as a photography student. Sometimes I was lazy with taking images but other times I found things inspiring within the venues and had to snap pictures of it too, rather than just a selfie or group picture of who attended the event. Times like that are when I think this documentation turned into art for me, and times when I let more of myself and emotions out in my writing were also art for me. Obviously these were also the times I put more thought into what I was photographing or writing, which made me think about my everyday life. I could be walking from my apartment to my car underneath and see something that catches me eye, whip my phone out, and snap a picture (this has actually happened multiple times), so these events were just another way for me to keep snapping photos and practice seeing things and forming images in my mind into an actual image with a camera. Practice makes perfect, right?
In the beginning of the course, I looked at other students blogs more often than I did towards the end. At first I just wanted to see how other people were going about typing their post and how they were taking their pictures. A little bit of anxiety came with this course since I have never been apart of a class taught this way. I then found myself interested in what my classmates had to say though. I probably looked at blogs of events I wish I attended more so than others. And sometimes I liked to look at blogs of events I chose to go to, to see how they experienced the same thing I did. Every week I would look at the excerpts though. This also helped me to decide on which blog I wanted to check out further. I found the weekly excerpts to be their own piece of art in a way. I would smile, laugh or agree with what was there and thought it was very interesting to see snippets from everyone in one place. It was almost a mini research project of how we all thought, and reading them all as one rather than excerpts added to this. Overall, I guess I was more aware of specific students experiences over others just because I attended the same events as them or was able to talk with them outside of the event about their thoughts. It could be an interesting change for the next time this course is taught that everyone goes to an event together and have a discussion on it.
AGAIN! I really enjoyed this course and plan on taking it again if I can. More so than learning about the different topics of events I went to, I was able to learn about myself and my peers to a great extent. It is so rewarding to be able to say this, and I feel like it can only go up from here for next year and for other events I attend in the future on my own time.
