The Experiential Learning Experience — Final Entry
In this course, I have learned a lot from creating an About.Me page, LinkedIn account, a blog, and my own website. An important skill that applied to my experiential learning was organization. Being organized helped out a lot, but at the same time it was kind of stressful not knowing how to create a website, getting the domain name, keeping up with a blog, but it was worth it. This led me to looking around for video advice, trying to figure it out on my own, and actually learning that it takes time and effort for things to come out the way I want. I struggled with trying to make everything perfect because I want my work to reflect my personal life and not to mess up on anything.
Therefore, the experience was amazing because I am used to having professors help and asking them to explain the assignment, but this is hands on and do it yourself. This reflected the real world because sometimes the boss won’t be there to help if they are needed; just have to figure it out. Although the deadlines were flexible, it was another reason to get things done by the suggested due date because it lets the professor know that you weren’t procrastinating and presenting your work in a timely manner.
The About.Me page wasn’t new to me, but establishing the page was interesting from when I created it for the first time in Writing Digital Media class. This time, I felt established and had a little bit of experience under my belt to actually call myself a YouTube Personality and creating content for the channel. My About.Me experience was good, but the LinkedIn account was the one that I was worried about the most.
Creating a LinkedIn account, I was skeptical about it at first because I didn’t really know what it was about. I knew that it was a type of resume, but I didn’t know the website is made for jobs to find you and to build your professional resume online. I had a LinkedIn account before but deleted it because I didn’t know much about the website. I did enjoy the experience because it was interesting to look at other people’s pages to see how the type of language used on their page and to add people I know who will back up my skills. Over learning how to use the website, I learned that you can join groups and participate in discussions, although I haven’t posted to one yet I want to soon. Also, you can find recent jobs in the area you want to work in. It is very helpful for up and coming graduates to find a job placement rather than them searching on different websites to find a job and not getting any luck. LinkedIn is a great place to start job hunting for seniors preparing for the real world and this great opportunity has helped a lot in the class. It allows for us to have a connection with the professional side of what we want to do and to network with companies.
Keeping up with a blog throughout the semester was kind of hard. I’m going to be honest, I did forget at some point to update constantly because it wasn’t an assigned date for the blog post to be up. We just had to update it every week. Once I got into updating the blog and really understanding what I wanted it to be about, I enjoyed my blog entries. At first, I thought it was just supposed to be about how we relate this class to our field, what we’ve done so far, and how did we feel about the assignments. I set a focus point for my blog to be about entertainment news since it is the career I want to have. Therefore, I wanted to update my blog about the latest and exciting news people want to see and hear. Although, there is a lot going on in the entertainment industry, most people want to see what you know and how you keep up with the latest news. I am looking forward to keeping the blog up to date after class and getting my name out there in the entertainment industry.
The experience of knowing how to create a website reflects on this class because that is your portfolio. If people haven’t learned how to create a website from “scratch” it kind of shows; like me. It shows because of the content of the website and it leaves you to go with what you know or something that you have experienced with before. Whereas, people who are creative and have created a website before, their work looks great and it makes you think about your work to see if you can make it look outstanding as well. Even though, not knowing how to create an amazing website is not an excuse to making the website look extremely professional or presentable. It shows that you are willing to learn knew things and to get the idea of the assignment.
There were times that I was frustrated from trying to pick the best website, easy domain name, and what content I was going to put up on the website. After weighing out my options I decided to go with the cheaper route and make a website through WordPress and got my domain name from Namecheap. Namecheap was recommended by the professor, and by looking and others like GoDaddy, but Namecheap.com was the best way to go. Also, WordPress was the best website to host my domain name because I didn’t have to pay for the domain to be on the website every month, it is up to a year unlike some other websites, ready to made templates, and guidance and flexibility in creating your vision. Eventually, I want to upgrade my website and make it look better than what it is, but for right now I think it serves it’s purpose as a portfolio.
Experiential learning will shape what the student does next, academically, and professionally because it takes them outside of the standard world of where the professor guides you through everything to learning how to do things by learning experience. As I mentioned before, when students get out into the real world there won’t be anyone there to help them in getting tasks done for their job. They have to figure it out on their own and get it done in a timely manner. This class allowed for students to step out of their comfort zone to see what they could create by themselves or without any help from the professor. At least from my experience. Although we could seek advice from fellow classmates, personally, I didn’t want to ask for that extra help because I like the challenge of doing things by myself and for myself. If I don’t get it right, then I will ask questions when I see fit and try again.
Throughout this class, keeping up with other classmates post and tasks was an easy way to support them on Slack. Stepping out of my comfort zone and sharing what I post was a little scary for me. In order for me to get over that, I have to be confident in what I wrote and was hoping that it was what people wanted to see and read. This type of learning allows you to step out of your comfort zone academically and professionally to prepare students for the next step in their lives; whether it’s continuing your education or obtaining a job.
Overall, this class was a lot of lessons learned, stress, and excitement all in one, but after looking over everything there is nothing I would change about the class, if I had any input in doing so. It was an opportunity to basically brand myself, put myself out there, and not be afraid of what people were going to say about my work. I’ve learned that by going through this experience was needed because it is what takes us students out of being in the classroom and into a professional lifestyle. This is the biggest transition of our lives besides graduating from high school into college, and it allowed us to venture out and make a name for ourselves.
Therefore, not putting the word student in any of our professional profiles is more understandable now than before. We are stepping out into showing the world who we really are and presenting ourselves through the Internet. Whether I like it or not, people are going to look me up and see what I am about or what I have on the Internet and I would rather them see professional websites rather than just social media accounts. The biggest lesson that I have learned from this class is, never be afraid of steeping out of your comfort zone because you never know who wants to get to know you. The thing about branding is creating a name for yourself, keeping websites updated, and don’t be afraid to show the world you. Although I wasn’t sure how this class would turn out, I’m glad that this class is required to get your degree because there are numerous life changing decisions to learn from it.
