Reflection About the Course
Before the semester started, I was actually looking forward to take this class and knew that would be a lot of fun. Since I had ESL art appreciation class with Gitte last year, and it was awesome. I’ve always been a big gallery and museum person even before I came to America. The art 103 course with Gitte gave me a great chance and great guide of visiting those cool museum and gallery places in Chicago. Along with all the interesting assignments and projects we’d done, the class was not only about lecture and taking notes, you got the motivation (well, maybe you have to because it’s assigned) to think of art, define your concept of art, and even create your own art pieces.
[Excuse me of talking out of topic. It’s just I still cannot control my exciting and enthusiasm of the art appreciation class. All right, I will come to the point now]
Pop culture is everywhere around us. The movies we go to in a theater or DVDs we watch at home; the love songs we put in our iPods or the techno music we dance along with in a bar; the gossip news we talk about in breaks of work and school or Oscar Award winners we have posters of on the wall in our bedrooms are all pop-culture elements through daily life. Living among them, we probably barely thought about analyzing pop-culture. That’s what most attractive for this class, because we are learning something we already know a goodly amount of but only stay at the surface.
Therefore, the class can be difficult while it is interesting. The concepts are not stably defined since the world of pop culture is changing every day. The goal of the class is also not clear. What we supposed to know after this semester? What skills are we learning? I think each individual will get really differently from this class, especially when this class trains us more about critical thinking and exploring by our own.
Other than textbook, we used a lot of out-of-class materials, like the Red Eye, websites, field trips, and social events. The most frequently used source is Internet. We either search information from websites for our presentation or create our own pop-culture stuff such as blogs, glogsters and avatars. Moreover, which is my favorite also, we are encouraged (or say assigned) to attend pop-culture events out of school. As a new comer to America, I don’t know much about the festivals, events, celebrations or activities I can join here in the city. This class gives me chances to be involved in those cool events and, at the same time, impulse me to find out more by myself. Comparing with my first year here, I am a huge step forward to a social person now.
Besides, I like it when we have those presentations and discussions. I prepare my topics, learn more of the objects I preferred by doing research; and through the presentation, I show my stuff to people while they introduce their favorites to me. We are not only learning from the teacher but also among each others. Since it is pop-culture class, I believe it is always better to know what other people at or around my age think of pop-culture and what people of another generation think. The movies and songs my classmates introduced to me, I am surely going to check them out.
However, there is one thing sad about this semester. I didn’t have enough time to enjoy the class fully, especially when it is close to the final. I am taking five classes this semester which is 17 credit hours. Thus, I got to do all the final work during the last two weeks. It’s like running over the clock; sometimes I almost think I’m exhausted. When all the work dues on the same day, I know I could have done better but I just have a mess in my head and could not set myself in a good condition.
After all, I love this humanity 107 course!
