Reflection

Throughout this experience, the themes and guiding principles of Community-Engaged Scholarship were consistently reinforced, creating a positive and productive environment for all involved. Most notably, the instructor team and training cohort emphasized the ideas of shared goals and values and collective benefit.

Overall, my experience at PPWT has been insightful and very educational. Though I have done some forms of small group tutoring on campus in the past, I came into the program a bit worried about my teaching ability. Some of these past experiences were in informal contexts, namely in the Princeton Triangle Club; other positions, such as being a mentor for student sound designers at the LCA and a lab teaching assistant for Princeton's introduction to computer science class (COS126), were more formal. However, they were all nowhere near as long as this program, and this was the first big opportunity in which I could closely interact with and influence the curriculum.

A very interesting aspect of mine and Kay's teaching was our different backgrounds and experiences in how we learned the skills of live sound. While Kay had gone to recording school and completed multiple certifications, taking a more structured approach to learning, I developed my skills through "trial by fire" - in other words, I was immediately thrown into a large production and had to learn things on the fly. I did have upperclassmen that I could ask questions from, but most of my learning came from making mistakes during shows and simply doing enough performances to eventually get familiar with things. 

For PPWT, this allowed me to have a good eye for what the cohort might struggle to understand at first, what extra information they may need that we otherwise would brush over, and so on. I would be able to pick up on concepts that were second-nature to Kay but potentially confusing to the cohort at first - for example, what a compressor is - and provide an explanation of these ideas, trying to use a minimal amount of technical jargon. Not only did this benefit the cohort's learning, but this also allowed me to find areas in live sound that I was still feeling less confident in and review them. Through this work, I was able to gain confidence in my teaching ability and gain insight into how day-to-day lesson plans were structured and created.

This internship experience has given me good insight into how to continue passing down my knowledge to future classes at Princeton. Indeed, with the support of the LCA, I am working on founding the Design Collective of Princeton. This is a new student group focused on building community across technical designers from all performing groups on campus (theater, dance, etc.), and connecting new designers with resources and mentors to further develop their skills. I look forward to using some of the material from this program to inspire workshops for student designers on campus and help those curious in the technical side of performing arts explore their interests and passions. 

In the long run, I plan to continue using these skills that I have obtained from the program to pass down my knowledge to a wider range of interested technicians, and explore the connections that can be made between live performance and engineering.