Its been real. Every good thing does come to an end. Sometimes the best part about a journey doesn’t lie in the destination, but in the reminiscence of the journey. I can never get over my initial reaction to the class. I my now 4 years of attending York, I have never enrolled in a non traditional class. I thought those type of classes didn’t exist.

Then boom, it was this cold afternoon in December where I sat in my room trying to create my schedule for this semester. I searched the course catalog and found a couple courses I found interesting. I narrowed the courses down to 2 course and I ended up picking this course over that one because the class wasn’t too early or too late in the day. Little did I know my creative edge was about to go for a wild ride.

In my honest opinion, this is probably the only course that I actually found enjoyable. There is no traditional homework per se. Instead, we have blog posts that we have to write once we learn something new. The best part about it is that we don’t have to read a textbook, paper or any literature to be able to write a well written blog post. The only limits are our imagination and creativity.  Boy did I love this. Let me quickly fire up my DeLorean time machine so we can take a trip down memory lane to some of my favorite sessions of this semester. Buckle up, time travel activated in 5..4….3…2…1…..WHOOOSH!

 

Week 3, are internet memes art?  My blog post response to this prompt was really what set it off. In the first 2 weeks, we learned how to do basic blogging This includes hyperlinking, creating gifs and images.  This was the first chance to really synthesize that new knowledge and apply it to something. This is kind of how a basketball player would learn a new move in the gym and use it to score extra points in the game.

I really let my creativity loose with this post, since I wrote about meme stocks. Around this time there was a frenzy about meme stocks, such as AMC and Game Stop. I explained the situation and gave my impression on what’s going on.

I think I went above and beyond with this because I put so much writing and effort into it. The goal was to start strong in the semester so I can have more motivation to finish strong.

Professor Seslow’s comment was even more encouraging. It felt great. I was doing good work and It was being recognized. My work wasn’t just an assignment the professor only looks at so he can grade it. No no, my work was more than this. My classmates also gave approving reviews. The accolades don’t stop there…there’s one more!

Turns out Professor Seslow read my post 3 times in total! This was all the motivation I needed. I barged into assignment 3 with newfound energy and motivation. I really got to blog about one of the most comical things on the internet; Memes! Even better, I had a chance to argue whether memes were art or not. In that week I learned how to blog my thoughts in a fashion where I present an argument, and use supplemental images such as memes to support it. This was more interesting than writing a paper and using peer reviewed research articles to support them…..BORING.

 

Making the blog posts on ct101 were a warm up to a bigger picture…..CREATING OUR OWN WEBSITES. This propels us into week 6.  Building a website was always something I’ve dreamed about. I didn’t know what exactly goes in to the process. Turns out, the first step in building a website is creating a domain name. The domain name is a unique address of your website so it can be found on the internet. This is similar to someone trying to build a house from scratch. Before they do this, they must choose a location. Understood? Good. Now moving on.

Initially I was a bit indecisive about my domain name. There were a few subjects I wanted to relate my domain name to. These subjects include cars, financial literacy and a “current events” website. I settled on financial literacy. Thus, my website was born. In a subsequent assignment, I explained my plans for the website. I plan on creating a financial literacy website for all to access and use, The site will fund itself through money generated from ads.  This way, people get to access my content for free and I still make a little money on the side.

Everybody wins here. I plan on maintaining and keeping this website because I’m a person that likes to finish what I’ve started. I learned all these digital oriented skills. I believe it would be a waste if I don’t put them to good use and apply them to the real world. After all, that’s what this class is about. Over the summer I’ll add more content and promote it. The goal is to write about 2 blog posts a day. I don’t expect immediate results. If I do this consistently for a year and do some moderate level of promoting, the website will gain a decent amount of attention soon enough. I’ve already started researching the basic ways to promote a website. The first half of the video below has already been taught to us by professor Seslow. However, the second half has been very useful.

As cliche and sappy as it sounds, I truly enjoyed every aspect of this class. The class started with the basics and gave enough time to learn and develop these basic skills. Once we’ve mastered these, we progressed into creating websites. Creating websites was probably my favorite part. I want to take these skills even further by building my e-commerce site from scratch, element by element.

This would be the perfect real world application of my newly learned skills. As you can see, my summer will be very busy! I think that knowledge is meant to be applied to the real world. In a traditional class, hardly is the material learned applied to the real world. If it’s applied, its usually applied when someone is in their field of profession. This class gets rids of that convention and allows newly acquired skills to be applied right away. I can honestly said I learned a lot in this class and I will continue to learn about building websites and creating content. It’s rare that a class inspires you to take things a step further and add on to knowledge learned, long after the class has ended. It’s time to board the DeLorean once again to return to the future. Buckle up, taking off into the present In 5….4…3…2….1….WHOOSH!

Lets talk about grades now. Based on the consistency and in depth nature of all my blog posts, I think I deserve an A in this class. I’m sure everyone says they deserve an A, but hear me out. As aforementioned, I stated I started off the semester strong with my first official blog post. I kept that energy up until this point. Even with this post I’m writing, this is my longest post yet. You can clearly see the progression in my blog posts.  This class has interested me long enough for me to keep posting quality blog posts. Each of my posts capture a piece of my personality, giving the impression  I’m actually engaging in a conversation with you. I stay far away from monotonous sounding text. I reserve my monotonous writing for the more boring traditional courses. LOL.

A major constituent of grading is consistency. Another is progress. If you combine the two, it wont be hard to achieve a more than decent grade. Another constituent is pacing and submitting assignments on time. This doesn’t really apply to this course because we are given ample time to complete our blog posts. In fact, we’re advised to take our time and not rush to submit. Quality is prioritized over punctuality, which is good.  Even then, I still completed blog posts in a reasonable manner where I don’t have to rush to complete multiple blog posts in the week before the semester ends.

Once again, its been a great run. I genuinely enjoyed this class and I would definitely recommend my peers to take it. The semester is over, summer is here, the weather is great, and best of all IM GRADUATING! I hope you all have a great summer. Stay safe, get vaccinated and be well.

JOHN OUT! (Mic drop, champagne glass up).