Anna Chen
Arts Scholar
Semester 1
The switch from high school to university is certainly not what I had originally expected. Throughout high school, I had thought my college experience would turn out the way my sisters' had. Moving into dorms freshman year, living on campus, maybe coming home with some interesting stories about the people I'd meet. I never would have expected my first semester of college to be done from home through mostly Zoom meetings. However, ever since COVID struck, my expectations had completely changed. Given the situation, it wasn't a shock to see that all my classes had moved online. It meant that I would end up staying at home all semester- and maybe for longer- but that didn't come as a surprise either. Going into classes, however, the workload was much less than I expected (at least until exam weeks occurred), though that may be in part because of COVID.
From what I've experienced so far is CPSA, I find it interesting to see how some of the things we've learned connect to some of the topics we have gone over in my other classes. For example, much of what I've learned about community and communication relate to what I've learned about different techniques used in communication in my INAG 110 (communication) class. So far in CPSA, we've also had a chance to learn more about many different mediums of art that I had not know existed, nor did I expect to learn about. I'm still hoping that we have a chance to try some of these different forms of art ourselves at some point during this program. Many of the events we have done so far in this class have also not been what I had originally expected in the sense that many of the activities were not as hands on as I had thought they would be. Unfortunately, this is largely because of the virtual environment we are working around, but despite this, I still found many of the activities we did in class very memorable. Looking back at my semester in CPSA, the most impactful thing that I have learned is how much UMD front line workers sacrifice every day in order to perform their jobs properly and ensure that campus can run as it should through the Scholars Serves assignment at the start of the semester. Because of this assignment, I plan to be more grateful for what I have and to be more openly appreciative of others efforts.
Going into next semester and maybe even next year, my perceptions have changed quite a bit. I am expecting it to be very similar to this semester, with many things being done virtually until it is safe to do so otherwise. Despite the ongoing COVID crisis at the moment, I'm happy to say that I think the university has done a good job handling the situation. I'm glad that restrictions were put in place so that students, staff, and faculty could go on with their lives as normally as possible while staying safe.
Semester 2
Second semester has granted me many great opportunities, one being the opportunity to form relationships with faculty. In a virtual environment, this has become far more difficult as there are not as many opportunities to casually meet with faculty as there would be in person. Rather than talking to my professors before and after class as I normally would, I instead took the time to get to know them during more structured meetings. For example, when meeting with my academic advisor, I made sure to make the most of the time we had to have a proper conversation in hopes to get to know her better in the fall. I would reccomend incoming students to also make the most of these meetings regardless of whether they may be in person or not. In addition, I would reccomend making use of office hours and not being afraid to email professors as necessary. In addition to getting to know faculty, I have also been able to better connect with other Arts Scholars students. This is mainly thorugh Arts Scholars pentathalon events that we have had, as it gives me a chance to attend these events with other students who share similar interests with me. Getting to know other students has definetely helped me adjust to college as it really helps to know that there are other students going through a similar experience. The biggest obstacle in pursuing these relationships is again the virtual environment. For future students, I recommend being active in chats and getting to know other students that way as often times the students there are more than willing to get to know more people. The Arts Scholars program helps foster this sense of community through classes, workshops, and assignments. I found the workshops we had second semester to be another great way to work with my peers to learn more about new artistic mediums that I know little about. I workshop I chose to do was the photography workshop and it was a great opportunity to work with others and create something worth being proud of for ArtsFest. In the future I plan to contribute to the Arts Scholars community by actively looking for events and opportunities to share with my peers.
My experiences this year in the Arts program has taught me how impactful art can be. We have learned much about how art has been used for activist purposes and educational purposes. My experiences in the program have also taught me more about different artistic mediums and how they can be used to accomplish different purposes. Experiences such as the Strathmore field trip have made me realize how versatile art can be. I think future students in this program may feel the same and come to see more value in the arts like I have. Over the duration of the semester, I have found that aspects of the course such as workshops were the most beneficial in supporting my work. This is largely because workshops allow me to apply what I learn in class. For future arts students, I recommend actively participating in events to really get the most out of their experience.
Semester 3
This semester with Arts Scholars has revealed a lot more to me about what art is capable of accomplishing. For the most part, these revelations occurred throughout the process of planning and sharing our Capstone ideas. For example, seeing how others wished to express certain concepts through various lesser seen mediums such as weaving reminded me of how using unique mediums can help reshape and add to a person’s understanding of a topic. These mediums help recontextualize many ideas in a format that brings out ideas that would have been difficult to convey otherwise. Through the preparation for the Capstone project, I also learned more about different aspects of the creative process such as the brainstorming and critical response process. By applying some of these ideas in class, we were able to receive feedback from peers and brainstorm multiple general ideas of what our project could look like to initiate the creative process. Throughout the process, we were also able to constantly interact with our peers to hear their opinions and have our questions answered as a way of helping us refine our ideas to improve the clarity of our projects.
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The ideas I’ve learned in Art Scholars have also applied to areas outside of this class as well. For example, during the last few months, I have seen news related to extended reality and discussion related to the pros and cons of using extended reality as an art form. Some people believe it to create an immersive experience for the user while others worry that it may encourage people to escape from reality more often. My experience in Arts Scholars helped me better understand these ideas as, in Scholars, we often bring up various different perspectives on ideas, which made it easier to keep an open mind when viewing and understanding the reasoning behind the arguments for both sides. What I have learned in Art Scholars has also had some interesting connections to what I have learned in my other courses as well. Most notably, this semester I am taking a Fantasy Literature course which often talks about stereotypes and societal habits presented in literature and how authors use their writing as a means of challenging some of these ideas. This reminded me of what we learned in Arts Scholars about how art can be used as a means of activism. During Scholars, we would constantly talk about how art can be used as a way to challenge or express ideas using artistic mediums that, though not commonly used for this purpose, can express ideas in ways that are far more meaningful than they could be expressed otherwise. This directly correlates to the ideas mentioned in my Fantasy Literature class as, through Fantasy, authors are also able to subtly challenge ideas similarly to the way we’ve seen artists mentioned during Arts Scholars do as well.
The Scholars community has played a major role in my experience in Arts Scholars these past few semesters. For one, interacting with my fellow Arts Scholars has played a role in improving my learning. In class, being able to work with my peers on brainstorming ideas was extremely beneficial and gave me a chance to better understand perspectives I would not have otherwise seen. In addition, interacting with my peers during certain events, such as when we viewed the play Rich Kids, was also beneficial as it helped me understand what was otherwise a difficult to understand play. This semester, I have contributed to the Arts program and the community by contributing to discussions and participating in field trips. However, I do wish that I had more time this semester to attend more of the Scholars hosted events and get to know more of my peers as well.
Overall, Art Scholars has brought me in contact with concepts that have challenged my previous beliefs on what art is able to accomplish. Exploring new perspectives is extremely important as it educates and introduces me to various valid ideas that may be very different from my own. These ideas can allow me to add onto my understanding of a topic and make me more open to seeing new perspectives in the future. For example, a TED Talk that I viewed for a pentathlon assignment on using photography to change the world challenged my previous beliefs of the limits of certain forms of art when it comes to bringing people together. I had originally seen photography as an art form that was mostly used for conveying ideas rather than bringing communities together. However, the presentation showed that photography in fact can bring entire cities worth of people together depending on how it is used. I believe other art forms may be able to do the same depending on how they are used. I hope that as I continue in Art Scholars for another perspective, I am able to keep learning more about art and what it is able to accomplish alongside my peers.
Semester 4
I learned a lot this semester in Art Scholars. Perhaps what I learned the most from would be my capstone project. Before academic showcase, I had never created a curation before, let alone showcase my drawings through an exhibit and a presentation. My capstone taught me a lot about the importance of considering my audience when planning out how to present my work. I learned about concepts such as "killing your darlings" from class which helped me narrow down the focus of my project and make my project more clear. Through Art Scholars, my perception of art has grown. It was very inspiring to see various examples of how versatile art can be during ArtsFest. Though I've always heard that art is a great medium for self expression, I had not considered using it to create a physical representation of something intangible. There were many examples of this during ArtsFest with curations of collages and drawings representing a variety of mental health struggles people have. This made me realize that there is always more to art and what can be done with it than I'd ever expect. My capstone incorporated many things that I have learned the past two years in thiis program. Throughout the program, we have learned different strategies regarding time management that made it much easier to finish my project on time. In addition, some of the concepts we learned this year and last year regarding artistic elements were also incorporated into my final piece. Concepts such as rule of thirds and leading lines that were covered in workshops that I attended last year and this year helped with the composition of my final illustration. I found that the Art Scholars workshops that I attended helped deepen my existing talents by teaching me more about technical skills that I can incorporate into my work. Art Scholars also introduced me to forms of art that I have not experimented with before. For example, the workshop that I attended last year introduced me to photography and photo editing, something that I now experiment with for fun. Art Scholars also gave me an opportunity to collaborate with people with a diverse community of people. For example, in the Hard Surface Art and Design workshop that I was in this semester, I worked together with people with a variety of skillsets. There were people with experience with engineering and design as well as people with very little experience with drawing and design as a whole. Though we all had very different backgrounds, I found it enjoyable to work with everyone in the workshop as everyone was knowledgeable in different topics. This workshop focused specifically on the overlap between engineering and art, so I was able to contribute more to the design aspect of our excersizes while others focused on functionality. Overall, I think that Art Scholars has taught me many lessons and given me a new appreciation towards the arts. This past year in particular we've learned a lot about professionalism and how to design a project from scratch. The skills that I have learned planning and working on this capstone are extremely valuable and I expect to use them often in the future.