Final Entry
This course has been one of the most exciting and interesting courses throughout my college life, as well as the most confusing, difficult and painful one. This course had nothing in common with the standard college courses. Firstly, it is a Senior course, which already makes it more difficult beforehand. Secondly, the structure of this course was absolutely different than most of the courses I took before, which created a bit of confusion at first. Most of the professors prefer classical method of teaching, just making their students attend the lectures and make notes and then pass the exams. But this Portfolio course was very different. It didn’t follow any major courses guidelines, it had a digital syllabus and it was using the concept of experiential learning as a main guideline and a goal of the course.
I have got a lot to say about this course. Both positive and negative things. First off, there were pretty much no directions in this course how to do and complete all the assignments, so I had to figure out everything by myself. Which was not that easy, to be honest. At first, I was really upset, lost and, honestly, hated this course. But the more I was doing for this course and writing about my everyday experience, the more I started realizing how useful and interesting this course is.
The first issue that I had associated with this class came out even with the title of the course — Professional Portfolio. I was wondering what content I could possibly put in my Portfolio so it would look professional. I thought that I didn’t have that much experience in the Broadcast Journalism area, but it turned out that I actually do. I went through my old college projects and the new ones and saw a big difference. My freshman year videos look amateur and unfinished, while my senior year projects look a bit more professional and they can be showed to the potential employers with no shame. I can definitely say that I grew up as a Videographer. Middle Georgia State University gave me great opportunities associated with my Digital Media Assistant position. I have got to learn a lot of things that would be useful when I enter the professional world. Also I have got to meet all those incredible people who work in the field and had a chance to interview them.
Another thing that bothered me at the beginning was the “experiential leaning” label of this course. I mean, aren’t your professor supposed to tell you what and how to do? Well, it turned out to be so much better for me to do things at my own pace, when there is no one standing over my shoulder. The deadlines were blurry and were used mostly to keep the students updated and to keep them on track. The entire course was constructed the way that all the assignments were basically experiential in their nature. Starting from the establishment of your online presence and finishing with a professionally looking website and portfolio that present all of your best works.
As I already mentioned, pretty much every assignment in this course was experiential. For example, the blog project. The establishment of your personal blog that reflects what you were doing each week helped me to self-evaluate my work and see the progress throughout the semester. Also the more I wrote in my blog, the more I saw how much cool stuff I am actually doing every week on a daily basis. We tend to take a lot of things for granted and something that made you super excited at the beginning becomes just a daily routine that you stop noticing. The blog helped me to realize how much I actually love my job and how I enjoy the things that I do every day even though they do not always go as I planned or imagined.
Another assignment that we had was to build your own website. Oh Lord. I hated that assignment at first. As I mentioned couple of times before in my blog, I have never had any related experience and this assignment terrified me and made me cry. I had to learn everything by myself without any assistance. I had to figure out how to purchase the domain, upload all the content that I created as a professional in my area and finally polish my website to the point that it looks good not just in my own opinion but also in the opinion of others. I hope that I succeeded. I have spent a lot of time fixing and changing the way my website looks and I hope that my viewers like it as it looks now. I think that the knowledge of creating of the website is one of the most important ones that I have learned throughout this semester. If you know the process of building a website that will definitely give you credibility in the professional world.
Also building of the site, as well as other assignments, taught me that I have to better manage my time. I am that type of person, who procrastinates like crazy and does everything else just not to do the assignments beforehand. And then there is a due date. And then I have to focus all my abilities and make the work done in the very last minute. That sounds like a terrible time managing; however, I have never failed so far. I get more productive when it comes to the due date, even though it causes an incredible amount of stress for me.
But, okay, that works with the school and with some simple assignments. But this course taught me that it would not work out when I get an actual job. For example, for my documentary shoot I had to sit and think about all those specific things that I have to do during the preproduction, production and postproduction stages. It takes time. A lot of time. Also you have to be aware that making an interview appointment is not an easy task. You have to keep in mind the schedule of the other person and you are the one who need to adjust for it no matter what. Also the editing process takes a lot of time as well. You can’t just do everything at once, spending 15 hours sitting in front of the computer. You have to have some breaks to see little things that needed to be adjusted. One more thing that I have learned is that it is very useful to have a friend who can criticize your work and tell you what is needed to be fixed. You have your own perception of the way the things in the video should look like, but sometimes another person can look at it from a different perspective. And this perspective is more valuable when it is just a viewer, not a videographer or editor.
As far as my future career, I am quite concerned about it. I still have a couple of classes left to finish my degree. I believe, that the knowledge and skills that I gained during this course will be carried over to those classes and help me when I start working. I am definitely not one of those people who just go with the flow after graduation. However, my future scares me. Not like I am not confident in my professional skills or interpersonal skills. Most of the factors that I am concerned about do not depend on me since I am an international student. I am still trying to decide what exactly I want to do in my life and choose as a career path, since my New Media and Communications degree opens the doors pretty much in any industry related to digital media. Before this course I was almost certain that I want to be a Sports Journalist and cover the major tournaments and events and take interviews from the people that I have admired for so long. But after working on my documentary film, I realized that there is much more to do than I thought. I enjoyed doing my website and uploading all the sports related content in there: pictures, videos and news. But when I was putting all the pieces together for the documentary that is when I felt extremely happy. That is where I found my happiness. Maybe I am meant to be the person behind the camera, the one who tells the story.
As far as the Graduate school, I would love to do that. But I understand that this aspect is not that important in my career path, unless I want to teach, which I have never thought about. I am pretty sure that I can pull it off, but only if it is necessary. Graduate school could be fun, but honestly, I want to start working in my professional field as soon as possible and gain that amazing experience of being a part of a digital world.
