A New Class Experience

Week 1:

This past week was definitely one of the most interesting of my college career. It has been strange adjusting to a new schedule and new way of learning I suppose. It has been refreshing to get out of the usual running around to 4-6 classes and juggling all that at once, and just focusing on one big project instead.
One thing I learned this week is just how important collaboration is going to be in this project. We have a major project to do, and no one person will be able to accomplish many of the elements by themselves.
This week we did a fun collaboration activity. We divided into four groups; two groups were given cakes, frosting, and candy. The other two were given fabric, sewing materials, and a whole assortment of craft items. The assignment was to simply create a piece of art within your team. I learned two things from this activity, first, you have to delegate to get things done, second, the best ideas always come from a group brainstorming and bouncing ideas off each other.
There was no way any of the groups could have finished their projects without working together, it was all too much work for just one person. I feel our group did a good job of dividing up the tasks, making sure everyone had something they were working on, and making sure we got done on time. We also tried to make sure no one was delegated to a task they didn’t want to do. We worked to make sure it was fun for anyone.
Our group had kind of a hard time coming up with an idea. We were all staring at the pile of art supplies thinking, what the heck are we going to do with this. Had I been by myself, I would have made a miniature pillow, because I would have never thought of anything else. However, by talking together and bouncing ideas off each other our group was able to come up with a good, fun idea for our project.
This week I also learned a lot of just how much goes into setting up and maintaining and art museum. It was very interesting going on the tour with Tania Said and hearing from her how they constantly have to decide what to put on exhibit, what needs to stay in storage, and how they make their decisions. Also, by walking through the museum both on my own and in the group, I kept thinking about how there was always a method behind the madness. Obviously someone had a good reason for hanging some particular painting where it was. Overall, it was an interesting and enlightening experience for me.
One thing I am very excited about for the project is working on the documentary. While I realize it is obviously secondary to the website and the ultimate goal of this seminar, I still can’t help but think about it and come up with ideas in my head. By watching a couple of the documentaries from past classes, I came up with a lot of ideas, and got a good idea of where we really need to be going with this. I’m looking forward to getting started with it and watching it all come together.