Course Options & Reflection

My exit interview is in three hours. Talk about last minute.

Courses I took:

TCOM Immersion

Very immersed in some TCOM here. Pretty much dunked in it. Learned to use an $8000 camera (never did find out what it was called, though). Learned about three-point lighting. Did a lot of editing on Final Cut, which I sort of learned as I went. Audio editing for the Audio Tour on Cool Edit. Maintained a YouTube site, if that counts. Oh, and those Animotos. I like those things.

Writing in the Workplace

Did a whole lot of this, too. Every script for that audio tour passed through so many hands and was read and edited by so many people. I imagine this is what it's usually like when you're producing something that's actually going to be used. Although I only actually wrote two one-and-a-half page scripts, an instruction sheet and my Art Exploration page, there were so many revisions of each that I actually typed a lot more words than you see. Or listen to or whatever.

Group Decision Making

I think very few decisions made in this class, about anything, were made by just one person. Everything was run by Beth at the very least, but usually put up in front of several people or the whole class to decide. Even little stupid things. For the one million revisions of the tour scripts, we read them to the group and then got everybody's suggestions for improvements. Made a lot of group decisions this semester.

Scriptwriting

Or script revising. So many revisions. I wrote those damn audio tour scripts like seven times. Option fulfilled!


Reflection


Saturday at work I caught myself writing YouTube videos to promote the store and making a restroom sign on a program I didn't understand. I think I can blame this class for that. I've learned how easy and how much fun it can be to just try doing something that I don't really know how to do. I used to look at not knowing how to do something as an obstacle, and since I'm kind of lazy I would just give up and do something else. Now I look at it as a fun challenge. I don't think Caturday Night Fever would ever really happen if it weren't for this experience.

Also, I'm over my fear of public speaking. Seriously. Talking at the showcase was kind of terrifying, but I did well and, as nervous as I was before and afterwards, I was feeling just fine when I was actually on stage. Now I know that I can do that pretty much anytime. Probably the last thing I expected to take out of this class, or out of anything ever.

This has been a unique, fun experience, and probably some of the best job training possible. School should always be like this. Think of all the websites that would get made.