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SEMESTER 1
Semester 1 Reflection
Reflections: About
My first semester of school here at the University of Maryland was a mix of positive and negative experiences. College Park Scholars Arts gave me some opportunities to make UMD feel more like home. The content of the class, outside of colloquium, was less of a workload than my other classes, as I had a week to complete each assignment, and they were enjoyable too, especially with the pentathlon assignment pushing me to attend art events.
So far, I have taken one Arts supporting course, Art and Society in the West from Renaissance to Present. While this class was unorganized at times, being fully asynchronous, it was probably my favorite class content wise. The class connected mostly with our discussions of Art as Activism, as most of the artistic movements and trends we covered were fueled by societal unrest or the need to change society, whether that be looking back in time to antiquity or looking forward to futurism. The artist grew to be a main actor in societal change, as all art is shown in public and can potentially make change. This idea of Art as Activism was definitely the most impactful thing we learned in colloquium. I knew art was used to highlight social and political issues, but really discussing that concept, and how it applies to us today in such a polarized world gave me more insight on how to approach creating and consuming art.
In CPSA100, we covered a lot that I did not expect, but mainly, the content from the field trips. I like that we had a wide variety of topics to choose from, and my field trip focused on art made from paper and wool, which was surprising to me. I think we could have discussed a broader range of mediums, as we barely touched theatre, dance, and literature, and most of this we would have to cover on our own outside of colloquium with pentathlon. Before starting the semester, I was worried pentathlon would feel like a chore, but it turned out to be the opposite. I had a lot of fun attending pentathlon events and planning my own personal activities for it too. I am also glad that I decided to join the Arts Advisory Board. I joined it on a whim, not really knowing what to expect, but once we started having meetings to plan the events and I got to know the AAB members, it became one of the highlights of my week.
This semester, I lived on campus in Bel Air hall. Living on my own for the first time was easier than I expected, and I loved having a triple room all to myself. The one thing I expected to get out of living on campus was making a lot of friends, which is something I worried about in high school. While I hung out with some of the scholars in Bel Air a few times, I never made any close friends on campus, so it was sometimes depressing to be on campus by myself. My closest UMD friends are the members of AAB, so I am thankful for that. I plan to go back next semester, and probably get an apartment for sophomore year, so I am still worried about making friends. Living on campus was difficult for other reasons, too. I sustained a concussion from hitting my head on the metal bar of my bunk bed, which affected my ability to do school work, as I had to sleep very often, stay in the dark all day, and not stare at screens for more than a half hour at a time. With these experiences, I will go into next semester more careful and more prepared for living on campus.
UMD’s response to the pandemic was mostly what I expected, although I did expect to be sent home earlier than Thanksgiving. I was satisfied with the mask rules and the mandatory testing, and the free testing offered on campus was really helpful. I think the student body could take the pandemic more seriously, though. There were many times I saw students walking around campus without masks on, or big groups of people sitting very close to each other without masks too. It worries me for the health of the students, faculty, and frontline workers on campus, and for the future of on-campus living and in-person classes.
Reflections: Text
SEMESTER 2
Semester 2 Reflection “Freshmen Time Capsule”
Reflections: About
My greatest success with developing relationships with faculty members is getting involved in a lot of the scholars activities, including the Arts Advisory Board and the peer mentor program. Although it was challenging as there were not many opportunities to talk to the Arts Scholars instructors one-on-one as a freshman fully online, the interactions I did have were positive. I loved the required meeting with an instructor once a semester, as they just wanted to check in and see how we are doing academically and personally. Harold especially made a comfortable atmosphere and was someone I could go to for help! Next year, I will be talking with Harold and Heather more often as the Arts Advisory Board Vice President, and will be living on campus at Bel Air hall. I recommend that incoming students try to get as involved in the Arts Scholars community as they can, and reach out to any of the instructors when they are having difficulties.
I definitely struggled with making relationships and a strong connection to the Arts Scholars community at first. At the end of the first semester, I was quite overwhelmed and contemplated leaving the scholars program, but decided to give myself one more semester to decide. Luckily, I feel a stronger connection now! One of my newer artistic interests, art history, led me to meet my closest friend at UMD, Rebekah Chun, as we ended up in the same class. I am so thankful to have met her, as she has helped push me to try new things and go out of my comfort zone, like joining peer mentors. Having a friend in the same program, club, and multiple classes definitely helped cope with the chaos of the pandemic and online school, because I always knew I had someone to turn to for help. The pandemic and not being on campus for the second semester made forming friendships difficult, as there were not many opportunities to actually make friends outside of class. I urge next year’s freshmen to join clubs and other extracurricular activities to try to make friends!
The Arts Scholars program gives freshmen and sophomores a community to help transition into college, giving us the opportunity to meet people with similar interests. While it would be better in-person, I could still feel the sense of community over Zoom. Through Arts Scholars events, AAB, group activities, arts supporting courses, field trips, and the Spring workshop, I was able to meet many different people and learn about forms of art I don’t focus on, like music, dance, poetry, and embroidery. Art, as an emotional experience, can help form relationships, and therefore fosters a community. One of the reasons I chose Arts Scholars was because I felt like academics was getting in the way of my artistic side, and the good thing about this program is that it pushes you into classes and activities to help engage you and bring out your creativity. I also love how the scholars programs focus on service and helping our larger community. For example, in the first semester, we did a service assignment, and I chose to research the daily jobs of the workers who clean and manage the dorms and dining halls, and wrote a thank-you note to show my gratitude for them during the COVID-19 pandemic. I hope to do larger service projects next year on campus!
In my first year of Arts Scholars, my understanding and appreciation of art has broadened and opened up to new forms of art because of this program. First of all, with the required supporting courses, I was pushed to take classes I may have normally avoided, like Art History. I found out that I actually love Art History, and went on to take an I-Series Art History course about difference and representation of marginalized groups in art. I have a deeper understanding of how art and media affects society through positive and negative representation through taking these courses. Secondly, the workshops, field trips, and AAB events gave me a chance to learn about art forms I am unfamiliar with. In my workshop, I learned how to embroider and sew various stitches, which I had never done before starting the course. In my field trips, I learned about wool and paper art, as well as weaving, which are all new to me too. My most eye-opening experience was in AAB, when we had our final event, the Poetry night. I have always disliked poetry, and found it boring or too difficult to understand, but after seeing the Arts Scholars perform their deeply personal and emotional poems, and the warm and supportive atmosphere the audience created, my opinion on poetry started to change. I now see the appeal in it, and may even try out some poetry myself! Future Arts Scholars should not hesitate to try new art styles and mediums, even if they are afraid they may not succeed immediately. Art is a subjective and evolving process, and we should always encourage growth rather than judgment and the fear of failure.
I would say the supporting courses, the workshop, and Arts Advisory Board were the most beneficial aspects to my experience in Arts Scholars so far. These kept me active and engaged in my artistic side, and I was able to do multiple large projects that I am proud of. For example, in my supporting courses, I read multiple books and even wrote a fifty-page guide book about women authors, and also created a virtual art museum exhibition! I was also very proud of my final project for Arts Fest, as I got to show off my new embroidery skills on some old shoes, and can wear my project too! The Arts Advisory Board gave me the opportunity to meet new scholars, gain leadership experience, and event planning skills. Each of these experiences required hours of work each week, so now that the semester is over, I can look back on all that I have learned. For future Arts Scholars, I recommend to find courses and workshops that are new to them but also appeal to their interests, so they can stay engaged in the content throughout the semester.
Reflections: Text
SEMESTER 3
Semester 3 Reflection
Reflections: About
Art can reveal truths of society that we may not know from our own experiences. For example, we recently covered La Manplesa in class, which covers the riots in Mount Pleasant DC, and those who experienced this spread their messages through music, poetry, and public speaking. They used art as a medium to tell the world about what happened to them to immortalize it in history. We can use art to tell our own individual stories, which is what we will be doing next semester with the final capstone project. The creative process is something we learned about and had to use for formulating our capstone project ideas, and involves the steps of preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. These steps allow artists to organize and write down their ideas before putting them into action. Through this process we also had opportunities for peer review. We can incorporate this feedback by genuinely listening without taking criticism as an attack on our work, but as suggestions, and decide whether or not it will make our projects more substantive and better quality.
This is not current news-related, but I did read an article about the NAMES project in the 1980’s that created the AIDS memorial quilt. I have done a lot of research on LGBT history in America, with the AIDS epidemic being a focal point as I am also a public health major, and this art piece is a prominent historical event to mourn and remember those who died during the AIDS crisis. Through learning about the creative process, I have reflected on how much time, energy, and planning must have gone into creating the memorial quilt. I also have thought about how it is a community effort, as people had to come together to write down the names of their loved ones who had passed and whose names would be forgotten if not for the people they left behind and their names being immortalized in art. The size of this art project also shows how many lives were taken, the severity of the disease, and the failure of the US government to step in and help. This idea of community is often brought up in scholars and has helped me to better understand how this art project was made and its impact.
The arts supporting course I took with the most connections to art scholars is ARTH263: Art and Difference. This class covered the history of representations of marginalized groups, and focused on many of the inaccurate, harmful stereotypes done by popular artists of the time. This connects back to arts scholars as it explained how art can make an effect on society. For example, we learned about stereotypes of Native Americans during art in the 19th century, and how it resulted in harmful beliefs about natives in the White American public. This shows the power of art and how you must use your platform responsibly as an artist. We also learned in scholars how art can be used as activism to help marginalized groups express their experiences and call for change, which we covered in ARTH263 for LGBT and feminist art.
By being in the arts scholars community and living in Bel Air Hall, I have been able to bond with people through art and our shared experiences, and make lifelong friends. Last year, with the pandemic and mostly virtual learning, I had difficulty making friends and felt very isolated and lonely. This year, I came into the semester with more confidence and motivation to be involved in the community, being a peer mentor and president of AAB, and taking better care of myself. I feel that this confidence and new friendships have helped me to better immerse myself in arts scholars and enjoy the community more. For example, we help each other with ideas for our personal art projects, and encourage each other to pursue opportunities.
This semester, I mainly contributed in scholars by being a peer mentor and president of AAB, alongside Reshma, Tiffany, and Maria. It was more difficult to hold these responsibilities alongside course work and friend drama, so I want to do better next semester. I want to be there better for my peer mentees, but it is difficult as most of them are off-campus commuters. I also had my first opportunity planning Arts Advisory Board meetings and events, and it was so much fun! I especially liked our first event of the year, the October open mic night, which had a large and talented lineup of scholars showing their art and performances.
So far, the people I have met through scholars have very similar beliefs and opinions to my own, but I still believe that discussing differing perspectives and experiences is beneficial. Scholars, being community focused, encourages students to come into the program with our different backgrounds and opinions and open our minds to new ones from other students, art, or media shown in class. This allows us to grow and learn as individuals that are newly stepping into adulthood, and helps us better our communication skills and may combat our biases.
Reflections: Text
SEMESTER 4
Semester 4 Reflection
Reflections: About
The events and projects I have displayed on my ePortfolio show my artistic development and my engagement in the Arts Scholars community. I believe that from the pentathlon activities, I have improved my artistic analysis and communication skills by being able to describe and relay my experiences at pentathlon events, in addition to broader meanings and applications beyond the event. I also reflected on the new kinds of art, music, design, and performance that I was exposed to or tried during the past two years. A great example of this is my final capstone project. I based the idea off of my own experiences with OCD, but challenged myself with a new medium of collage, and a less common genre, horror. This allowed me to try new mediums, but also plan and execute a project spanning an entire semester, and then present it professionally. From the capstone experience, I learned how to present and explain myself better, and also gave myself confidence that I can try new kinds of art and succeed.
Some examples of how my perception of art has changed because of Arts Scholars are the definition and scope of what is “art,” the ways to analyze art critically, and how to apply art to societal contexts. When we started off the program back in August 2020, one of the first major topics we discussed was “what is art?” Years ago, the word would bring to mind painting and drawing, but Arts Scholars opened me up to many new mediums and ways of creative expression. I now see that “art” matters less on the specific medium, and more on the intention. Some may see craftwork like quilting and sewing as just crafts, as it goes beyond aesthetics and also has practical use. I see that fabric design is a medium of art, as well as things like wire sculpture, glass blowing, makeup art, wool sculpture, and more. Through my colloquium and art supporting courses, I learned to critically view art and how to apply it to societal contexts. In colloquium, we learned the ways to positively give feedback to artists with their permission and guidance. In my supporting art history courses, I learned to analyze the various factors and patterns in art (light/shade, shape, symbols, line, etc.) and deduce the meaning and time period of the art piece. This was really helpful to know the motivations of certain styles.
My capstone project drew upon the topics I learned in the program by using artistic and research skills. For example, in colloquium we learned about the various research methods and how to write a professional research proposal to plan out our main ideas and weekly schedule to stay on task. In my supporting courses, especially the art history courses, I learned about symbols and patterns in art that give meaning to a piece. One of these was the use of shadow to enhance a painting and make it feel more dramatic, as seen in baroque paintings. I applied this to my capstone by having each of my collages surrounded by dark red and black paint so that the centerpiece of each collage would be more striking and in focus. I also learned about how the human eye likes triangular shapes and angles, and does not like tangent lines. I applied this in my collages by including many sharp angles, and also making sure my placement of paper cut outs and paint did not make any tangent or unpleasant shapes. The schedule that we made during the research proposal was extremely helpful for me to track my progress and stay on time to have my capstone completed by Arts fest.
Through my experiences as an art scholar, I have learned to be more open minded about art and I have a deeper appreciation of art styles that I previously misunderstood. For example, I used to hate poetry a lot, and while I still do not create any or actively seek out poetry, I now view it in a better light. This was because I saw our art scholars participate in an AAB event for slam poetry, and I was moved by their art, their performance, and their emotion. Art scholars have shown me how I may not fully appreciate an art style or medium, but can still see the love and effort that goes into creating them. Through the past two years I have learned that I really love art history, sewing, graphic design, and collage, all of which I only tried because I was motivated by the courses and other scholars.
During my art scholars experience, I learned how to collaborate well on artistic events and projects through group projects and being in the Arts Advisory Board. While the group project from freshman year, the podcast, was difficult, I think it gave me a better grasp on how to work with others who have different artistic ideas than me, and how to not fully take over our project. With the arts advisory board, I had to work with my sophomore and freshman peers to plan and execute pentathlon events. At times, we disagreed on how to go about hosting events and event ideas. This experience helped me to learn to take leadership roles, but also to recognize, respect, and implement others’ ideas.
My art scholars experience will impact my future by encouraging me to think about art, inclusivity, creative expression, and how others perceive my work in whatever job or field I go into. I also have a better idea of how art proposals and curation occur, and how to exhibit my art in a professional way. I will use the leadership and group work skills that I have acquired for my classes in junior and senior year. I also am motivated to continue trying new forms of art and become better at specifically drawing and painting for myself. Having another artistic outlet will help me with my personal growth and mental health. I also hope to be a TA for art scholars next year and continue to work on my artistic abilities, my leadership and organization skills, and also help future scholars in their journey.
Reflections: Text
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