What did you discover about yourself — your strengths, skills, habits, or ways of thinking — through this course?

Throughout this class I learned many new things about myself, along with many skills and lessons that I can now apply for the rest of my life. I learned that I find it hard to pace myself for a long project like this one. For the first part of the year I found myself on “cruise control” and I didn’t feel like I had to get things done with a schedule, however the back half of the year I started to feel stressed. My lack of urgency ended up causing me to feel the pressure at the end of my project, and I now know to keep a steady pace for the entire project when I have to do something like this again. I learned that when I’m stressed I will make a habit out of procrastination. The stresses I felt at the end of the year caused me to procrastinate not just in this class, but in other classes as well. This project has taught me that for future projects similar to the one, I have to create a schedule that I can follow, and hold myself accountable for when I don’t meet deadlines. I know now what it feels like to be stressed to the point where I lose a little motivation for the project, and I feel like I don’t want to experience that again, so I will be able to stay on top of things and complete my tasks on time.

How did your project evolve from your original idea to what it became? What influenced those changes?

My first intention when coming into this class was to use some kind of real math like statistics, or a computer program to determine possible results and changes that could be made to a soccer team’s formation. I started researching the topic and realized two things; I have no experience with statistics or computer programming, and that soccer goes way farther than formations. I ended up looking into tactics that the team used along with their formations to get a deeper understanding of what was occurring in games. I created a video series in the end, which I am happy about because I feel like it was the right place to end up for my project.

What’s a challenge you didn’t expect to face, and how did you respond to it?

A problem I didn’t expect to face was the lack of available video and film from MLS games. The MLS is a top league in the world, so I expected to find full length games available to watch somewhere. I probably could’ve seen this problem since we are in the era of sports only on streaming services, but I figured there would have to be some way to find the games online. I ended up using videos from whatever I could find on Youtube.

What was a moment this year when you felt especially proud, stuck, or surprised — and what did you learn from it?

I felt extremely proud and relieved when I started making my videos. Seeing them complete made me feel like the whole year led to this and I was able to achieve something I had been thinking and worrying about for a while. Each step in the video making process and each video completed felt like more and more weight being lifted off my shoulders.