Final Evaluation

              The documentary was an unexpected assignment when entering the class as I thought it was primarily an English course.  Though I thought it was a good assignment and turned out fairly well, my group did encounter a few challenges.  The hardest thing for the film was editing the footage we got to look good and fit into the film time and topic.  I am proud that we were able to put the project together considering the fact that no one in the group was very experienced in editing and we had to learn on the spot.  The only thing I would change would be to go back and have the interviewees come to us in the media depot so we could record in a recording room where the audio and visual would be better.  I was responsible for contacting potential interviewees and scheduling appointments with them to film as well as coming up with some of the questions to ask interviewees in order to get the answers we needed for the film.  I was also responsible with aiding Rana write the script and finding out what added dialogue should go where.  However, for the most part we all simply worked together to edit, film, and make the documentary as good as we were able to.  I feel that as a group we worked well together, no fights occurred and we all had a similar vision for the documentary.  I helped us keep on track and heading towards our goal as we sometimes got distracted.  I wish that I had been able to learn and understand the editing tools better in order to help my group in the final product itself more, but in the end the way we shared the work was a success.  Overall I wish I had contributed a little more in the digital aspect of the film and voiced my ideas a little more but I think we all contributed our all to make this project a success.  I am very proud of the differences between the first and the final cuts as we really put the piece together and accomplished our goals.

              The class was definitely different than I expected but I feel it did help me with critical thinking skills, I have begun to get more out of news articles and books than I did before as I now think critically about the audience and the way the writer has written the story to affect certain audiences in particular ways.  The article about Jennifer Lawrence changed my view of celebrity scandals immensely as I had always blamed the stars but as I read that article it made me think about how the photos got leaked in the first place; crimes are being committed against these stars and I had not noticed that before.  Public speaking has never been my strong suit as was displayed in the first speech we had in the class.  No matter how much I practice or understand the topic, when I get up in front of a group I freeze and cannot think or remember what I have spent so long practicing.  I have learned this semester from multiple classes that I am able to speak much better publicly when in a group setting and I have people next to me that need me to succeed.  I am a student who would much rather write a paper than speak publicly as I can edit myself and change things to get my point across where I cannot do so speaking.  I enjoyed learning about how to communicate differently but I wish that our grade did not weight so lightly on the written and so heavily on the verbal components of the class.  I enjoyed your teaching style as it was relaxed and I loved coming to class and hearing everyone’s opinions on topics as you allowed us to speak freely in a way many professors do not.  You made us learn while having fun discussing things in a way that never really felt like schoolwork. Overall I really enjoyed the class and the discussions we all had there, my only change would be in the grading scale.  I wish more emphasis was put on the blog posts and attendance so those of us who have trouble speaking up in class but were good students could have a better grade.  If not this option then allowing us to make another speech using the feedback from the first to try and redeem ourselves in front of the class as well as possibly having another grade added or replacing the previous one.  It would be a great incentive to get student to apply constructive criticism while getting better at speaking for future classes.