Semester 3

During this semester I was lucky enough to be able to continue my studies at home, so that I was surrounded by my family and could keep in contact with my friends. Even though I had this supporting group I, as well as many others, still suffered with longing for the experiences and activities that we could no longer due because of the pandemic. However, through this quarantine I was busy helping remodel the home my parents have bought and the creativity and artistry I could bring to that process made me be grateful for the time given. Even though I could not do what I’m used to, seeing how my family and I could change our house into our vision made me spin the narrative of the quarantine to being suffocatingly boring to actually being productive and a break. When I was beginning the creative process in quarantine a necessary step in initiating the process was to understand what I wanted to get across through my work and why I was invested in the message. Even though I enjoyed a lot of the assignments and activities in Art scholars, I wasn’t invested in them as I was in others. The works that I felt a connection to and felt invested were given greater attention and showed a level of work that represented my work ethic and skills. Following the creative process to when we are able to get critiques, I believe the best way to learn how to find the best in the criticism is to share your work with as many people as possible. When we would be in the zoom meetings and share our work to a group of people and receive feedback it was easier and more efficient to see what stood out to a lot of people, what different people enjoyed about my work, and if there was something wrong that many people commented on or if it was only one persons perspective. I think a lot of the ideas and themes I have learned during this semester were about the perspective of my work by myself and by others.
Hearing the News throughout the semester of movies and film being pushed to being released next year or being broadcasted on specific streaming networks stuck with me through this semester. Film and movies were one of the activities that I feared would go away and would leave even more time to get bored in quarantine, but the opposite effect occurred. Due to the fact that a lot of streaming services took on producing, releasing, and streaming movies that are new or lots of people like me had more time to enjoy watching movies that i missed seeing when I wasn’t in quarantine. For example, at the beginning of the semester I was finally able to watch Infinity war for the first time since it was released and could be a part of my friends' conversation about it rather than base my answers on what I heard. Having the time and the means to watch these movies give me a greater access to different themes, perspectives, and art styles that I otherwise wouldn’t have had the time to learn and experience. This way of thinking was shown in how the Art Scholars were able to still talk in discussions and work on projects in a new format that at first appeared to be a hindrance. 
One of my supporting courses for my major is Biology-principles of ecology and evolution and one connection I made between this course and Art Scholars is how you have to present your ideas and information in a professional, informative, and intriguing way. In biology we learned of evolution and organisms that we had to create into posters or PowerPoints that not only portrayed what we learned, but also present it in a way that was interesting to look at. This semester of Art Scholars, while working through capstone proposals, was very similar in this format because we had to represent our ideas efficiently and professionally , while also showing creativity and personalization.
My learning was improved with Art Scholars because the discussion we had in class could be personalized to each of us and give very thought provoking questions and answers. Working through the creative process, like what we worked through for our capstone projects, helped me learn what questions I needed to ask myself to be sure that I answered all the questions that were given and that I completed each part of my assignments. I do think where the living-learning community fell short was the availability of workshops and activities online or in person. I felt this semester that there wasn’t as much interaction between art scholars as there usually is, however this is understandable considering the pandemic that is occurring and everyone being located in different places. During this semester I felt I was always engaged in the discussions given and gave thoughtful answers, as well as, stepping out of my comfort zone by volunteering to do a workshop for my capstone project. I do wish that I was more interactive with other scholars outside of class activities and discussions however due to my schedule and poor planning I failed to make the most of what was available.
Going back to the theme of perspective I think that art scholars have brought me into a lot of contact with other artists who are a little older and have a greater grasp of what art means to them and how they use it to portray their perspective. Learning about their perspective that is different from  my own made me question myself to be better and understand what i want and strive for. Listening to their different perspective also gave me the comfort of knowing that it is a process of learning about yourself and art. Learning from other people also helped me gain vocabulary about what I wanted to talk about and therefore have the confidence to speak in discussions about my ideas.