This semester has been rough for me, to say the least. I got hit with the triple whammy of COVID, Bronchitis, AND an Ear Infection, back to back. I was forced to miss weeks of classes as a result, and spent damn near every second since I recovered trying desperately to catch up on all my classes. That’s why I’m here now, doing this mid-semester reflection almost at the very end.

I wish I could have given this class the attention and care that it truly deserved. So few of my classes throughout my college career have allowed for creative expression, and I definitely feel as though my capacity to express my feelings is very… stunted, from not having many avenues to do so. If only the circumstances were better, but alas, we can only do what we can with what we have. I can only apologize for my lack of participation, and try my best to make up my assignments now that my most immediate crises have passed. The weekend that I’m writing this, is entirely dedicated to making up all of the assignments that I’ve missed for this class.

Learning how to format text and write blog posts has been one skill I’ve been grateful to learn from this class. As a Journalism major, I think it will be tremendously useful for me to know, going into the industry in such a modern time. That’s a facet of Journalism that’s not covered very well in my courses– I know how to conduct interviews, do my due diligence with research, and write basic scripts, but the process of actually writing and formatting of pieces hasn’t been covered much in my curriculum, especially on an online medium.

I LOVED getting to write a movie review for the DS106 Assignment. I’ve always wanted to get into it, but never truly had the opportunity before. It’s nice to be able to talk unrestrained about myself and my interests for a change, AND it gave me a solid idea for areas in which to improve if I ever choose to do reviews and stuff for a living. By far, that has been my favorite assignment.

I also enjoyed getting to make the collage for the Digital Immediacy assignment. That one definitely flexed a bunch of nearly atrophied creative muscles. I may have gotten a little pretentious with it, but hey, I had fun and that’s all that matters.

As I get more comfortable with expressing myself, I’ve seen my posts steadily get more creative and expressive, especially with the more fun assignments like the two I spoke about earlier. I’m still not completely used to using an excess of gifs while writing, but I will try to get better about that.