I wasn't expecting this class to be as demanding as it was. Of course I was expecting papers, assignments and volunteering somewhere, but not a ten page research paper. However, the research paper was easier to write than I thought it would be. If I were to have designed this class, I wouldn’t have put the same amount of side assignments given. I understand how they can help, but with the projects being as extensive and time consuming as they are, the little assignments don’t really help with the stress. With that aside, I did enjoy this class because of what I learned through each project. I learned how to make a contract, find appropriate sources, and make different media. So my initial expectation of this class was that it would be like any other English class I’ve taken, but it put a new spin writing.

 

My reading and writing hasn’t changed much over the semester, I took two AP English courses in high school and I had very rigorous teachers since middle school. I have always had to put citations in papers, write a certain way, change how I wrote, etc. The only difference this course has compared to my previous experience is how much research and how much of my opinion was put into my papers. I usually wrote papers on books that I had read answering a specific answer, but never had to do much outside research.

 

My community service did not benefit me very much, other than it exposed me to the Tallahassee Museum. The volunteering I did didn’t really have anything to do with the actual museum like being a Docent or giving walking tours of the museum, which are volunteer opportunities the museum offers. Instead I helped out with a fundraiser where I stood out front directing people or painted little kid’s faces. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy some of my volunteering, but it would have served a better purpose if what I did while volunteering tied in the museum in a better way.

 

This class has reinforced my perception of communities, that they can be very large or very small as long as they have something in common. Through personal experience, I believe that most communities are formed through an organization or some sort of “extra-curricular” activity, and this is definitely true of Tallahassee Museum. All of the people who work or volunteer there regularly seem to have friendly relationships with each other.

 

Out of all four of the projects in this class, the research paper definitely taught me the most, mainly because it required me to research a new topic and learn something new. It may not have been information about writing style, but it did teach me about psychological influences on human perception, which I thought was pretty cool. Because my paper was about display techniques museums could use to engage visitors, I learned a lot about not so much the physical aesthetics of a display, but of how the display is perceived.

 

Overall I enjoyed this class and my volunteer experience with Tallahassee Museum, with just a few critiques on what I think could have been done differently.