Semester reflection

 

I can honestly say I got a lot out of this class. I have always considered myself to be a creative individual. I am terrible at math, and understanding numerical issues. That being said, I have always had an ability to create. When I was a kid I would make homemade action figures out of things like pipe cleaners and tin foil. I would take a wooden spoon and some pots/ pans out of the kitchen and pretend I was playing drums. I loved classes like art, woodshop, and history that introduced me to new abstract concepts. To this day I still buy and build legos (yeah I know, I am a nerd).

At the beginning of the semester I came into the class not knowing what to expect. I thought the class was going to consist of writing stories and poetry (which it did), but did not realize that it would help me connect a few pieces that I did not know I was missing. I suppose the best way to explain myself is like this. Imagine you are eating a new food, or you smell something and it's super familiar. You think and think, unable to place the taste/smell. Suddenly someone, or something reminds you what brought on that familiarity and something clicks in your brain. That happened a lot for me in this class. 

The first time I experienced this was during the creative family tree project. I have a pretty diverse range of interests (or so I like to think), and have never really thought about what inspires me. I have a youtube channel where I post songs and remixes of other songs that I have made. A Lot of the remixes I do are from cartoons and anime that I watched growing up. This was the first place I looked when figuring out who inspired me. Next I thought about my major (communications). That led me to the timberwolves broadcast team. I am a huge basketball fan, and a comm major. I had never thought about how these things overlap, but the project made me realize it. This same concept reappeared when I was working on my create your own project. The idea was in the back of my mind, but I never sat and pondered how video games that I played as a kid growing up inspired the music that I make today. 

The last project that I was to discuss is the found poetry project. This assignment ended up being almost ironic for me. I try to find humor in the things that I do, especially poetry. I think that the majority of people tend to associate poetry with negative emotion, so when I was working on this project, I tried my best to stay away from themes like sadness and anger. This led me to a logic textbook that I used for a class my freshman year. I never thought I would be creating poetry from a textbook, but I would say my best poem came out of it (My poem about the ice cream sundaes). This is just another example of how this class inspired me to put two things together that I never thought would be remotely similar.

The last (two) thing(s) I want to discuss about this class is the media we read/watched. First up is Steal like an artist. This book was interesting to me because “stealing is something that I have been doing for a long time. When I first got into creating my music, I learned by watching videos and copying whatever I saw. This was a process of trial and error, but I can say for certain that “stealing” is the only reason I have any idea what I am doing now. The next piece of media that I enjoyed was the documentary that interviewed the creative people. I liked hearing what they had to say, and It honestly quelled my nerves a bit. This is because I plan on going into a creative field and I didnt know what to expect.

680 A workload