My Story:
I am a current freshman at Wake Forest University. Throughout my time in high school, I learned about how much I enjoy volunteering my time serving others, especially children. I hope to take this interest further and become a child psychologist in a field where there aren't many black women. I want to help children who don't have a strong support system thrive emotionally.
"Just calm down, and everything will be okay": this was a detrimental phrase that I had been conditioned to say to both others and myself. This past summer through my annual volunteer work with Horizons of Atlanta, the program's implementation of social-emotional learning taught me that instead of providing comfort, these words minimized a person’s feelings.
Every morning, my group of kindergarteners would do a daily check-in with the Mood Meter. This meter was used to help them gain the adequate language to describe their feelings. One particular experience I had with social-emotional learning was with a student named Daniel; every morning, Daniel would be in the blue (low energy and low pleasantness), and wouldn’t want to express why he was feeling this way. One day, he finally opened up and communicated that he missed his brother. To combat this, the teachers and I then gave Daniel a picture of his brother as a reminder that although he was not there physically, he was still with him. As the days progressed, Daniel became more outspoken and happier in the mornings because of this simple reminder. If we would have immediately dismissed Daniel’s feelings, then he would never have opened up. I think that as a community we need to do a better job of allowing, not only children, but adults to be able to express their feelings without fear of deprecation. My experience pushed me to become more conscientious about my choice of language with others and with myself. This also led me to realize my passion of working with children.
The object of my podcast is to spread the word about sustainable fashion. Today, fast fashion is a terrible thing that many college students participate in. New trends emerge almost every week and many companies work to quickly hop onto these trends, making cheap and bad quality clothing. Thrifting is a wonderful way to experiment with fashion for a not-so-expensive price. The podcast was generally pretty simple to make, as I used the platform, Audacity, to record the media. Since this is something I am passionate about, this topic was not difficult to talk about. I enjoyed the process and will definitely look into making more podcast episodes in the future!
To enhance my podcast, I created a compilation of videos to go with the vocal audio. I decided to use videos of me from this summer on a thrift trip; the videos were filmed on my camcorder and give the video a vintage look. This shows my process of thrifting while I speak about my experiences and give tips and tricks to use while you try thrifting. I used IMOVIE to compile my footage; I had experience with this platform before so I had a pretty smooth time making this. The only issue I did run into was being able to upload the footage from my camera; it was tricky at first, but I eventually got it.
Before taking this class, I would say I was pretty digitally literate. I knew the basics of how to navigate and use the information I found online; however, there is a big difference between being digitally literate versus being digitally fluent. Now I can say that I am digitally fluent. Before I was consuming media, but now I am an active producer of media content. I had to create both my podcast and my digital story and learned how to use various tools through the process. Although I am digitally fluent, in my opinion, there is always something new to be learned. Technology quickly changes, so you can always expect to not know something. In this class, I learned more about AI technology and how it is being used today. I didn't know much about AI, but now I understand how I can use it properly. I also learned how to spot misinformation in media and also learned about how documentaries often skew information for entertainment. Overall, I think this course was very helpful and definitely aided me in becoming more informed and fluent.
We had a variety of speakers during this class. One of my favorite guests was Elizabeth Orr; she spoke about the Enneagram Test, a personality test that works to describe people, how they view the world, and their biggest fears. Through the test, I learned that my number is a 3.
A Basic Proposition is the trigger that causes us stress and conflict in our relationships. As a type 3, my basic proposition is "the achiever." As an achiever, I want to be the best at everything I do. I feel like when I was younger this was very true; I was very hard on myself and wanted to be the best at everything I do. Now, I think I am getting a little bit better at knowing that my best is my best, and I am content with that.
I also found the presentation by Sydney Beeman to be quite an interesting one. She spoke about the ethics of filmmaking. Specifically, we talked about whether filmmakers, especially documentary filmmakers, have an obligation to the truth. People love documentaries because they usually tell perceivably true stories in a fun and engaging way, but it turns out that they are not required to cite their sources. Some nonfiction filmmakers don't even really care if their films are true and accurate. In my opinion, any good and ethical filmmaker should provide true information and not manipulate the viewer into believing things that are not true. Documentary film just like most other types of film is produced to entertain, and sometimes manipulation is used to make things more interesting. Many filmmakers reveal information out of chronological order for narrative convenience, condense and edit dialogue, use soundbites out of context, and even edit information to portray something different than what actually happened. I learned that you should always do your own personal research on the actual story before 100% believing that everything in a documentary is true.