Qadar Njuguna
This semester was filled will new experiences for me. Before this, I had never created anything
besides a website. So, coming into this class, the website was the only area of semi expertise I
would say I had. Throughout the year we produced a video, a podcast, multiple blogs, and also
newspaper articles. My favorite to make was the blog post. I loved this because it was a freer
form style of writing. We could write it almost like a conversation, so I think that just made it
easier for me to be able to hit the ground running with ideas, especially since the blogs were
about things we had to create and the different processes of that. Choosing a least favorite was
very difficult for me because I really enjoyed this whole class and don’t think any particular
section was too hard. Although, my least favorite was probably the newspaper articles. These
became my least favorite based on the fact that they were some of my lowest grades in the
course. Creating them wasn’t difficult but they required a little more attention to detail then
the other writing parts of this course. I also did not do too well on the video but that was a very
fun and long-awaited experience for me because I have been watching car reviews since high
school and always thought it would be fun to do. Speaking about the video brings me to a
different topic of some challenges I faced in this class. There weren’t many that I experienced
but the main one was during the shooting of my video. Alamosa had some insane weather on
the day of my shooting which affected the first part of my video. It was a little tough to hear my
voice, without the wind destroying the speakers of wherever you’re watching it on. Another
challenge I faced was connected to the video assignment as well. My original plan fell through
due to some unfortunate circumstances and that led me to having to switch the entire premise
of my video into something new. This definitely could’ve been avoided if I had started work on
the project in a timely manner and just been more diligent in the weeks prior to the deadline. If
I started over, I would definitely do the project different and give enough time to shoot and edit
instead of having a week to do it all. The most important concept that I learned this semester
was not related to any of the assignments exactly. I would say the most important concept I
had to grasp this semester was time management. You think you are good with multitasking
and being able to be in two places at once and then you get a reminder about a major
assignment and you haven’t even started. The most surprising thing I learned about my media
is a mix of two things. I was surprised that my voice over a recording isn’t terrible and gross.
While I also learned that when I do produce a piece of media it is actually good. I have never
gotten feedback like I did this semester and I think that really helped my creation process. In
the future I can definitely see myself using all of these and needing this knowledge for jobs in,
especially with my podcast. If I were to have done an interview for my video project than it
would’ve been a perfect piece of media to give to a prospective employer, but the podcast is
mostly going to be used in the future and I think I will definitely use that soon.