Semester Reflections

Semester 2

After completing two whole semesters here at the University of Maryland, there is much to look back and reflect on. I have put in a considerable amount of effort the past eight and a half months, and I have many new memories to show for it. Firstly, this semester has provided me with numerous opportunities to integrate myself into the campus community as I grow more comfortable with the school and college way of living as a whole. This has encouraged me to build relationships not only with peers, but staff as well. One goal I made for myself this semester was to attend office hours more, which I did namely through my ENME272 course centered around computer-aided design. After making a few visits to professor Kreisberg’s office hours, I saw my confidence in the course improving, as well as my interest towards programs recommended by him increasing. I would strongly recommend to any that have not taken such advantage to do so, as building these relationships with professors can help facilitate and shape your interests along the opportunities presented on campus. This had the added benefit of being a great way to see how I could merge my interests in engineering with the arts, as computer aided design is inherently a more artistic aspect of engineering. I learned how I could take these digitally designed models and use campus makerspace resources to create something new, which I am currently considering implementing in some form or fashion for my capstone project next year.

Through this semester, I noticed that one thing the arts scholars community does incredibly well is of course encourage art, but more so encourage artistic experimentation and working outside of your comfort zone. This was largely exemplified through the workshops we worked in all semester. Mine specifically, focusing on alternative art mediums, explored how mediums and techniques that are not necessarily orthodox to the world of mainstream art can be utilized to encourage personal exploration of what speaks to someone individually. While Ren’s workshop was their idea and responsibility, I feel it still encompasses the spirit of art scholars exceptionally, as my biggest takeaway has been that this community encourages exploration and experimentation. This basis of what it means to be an art scholar is what I believe connects each and every one of us together, which results in mutual encouragement between peers to recommend and new things for each other, all while providing the support to do it.

All of this is to say that my time here in my first year as an art scholar has encouraged me to think more broadly about what constitutes itself as art, and how these labels exist outside what is generally accepted and considered to be art. This semester allowed me to learn to notice art in the most unexpected of places. Some of the places I have seen artistic intention that surprised me lately have been in my coding class. We spent a few weeks learning about coding graphs and I could not help but notice how the intention of color choice, scaling, data types and audience all fit what I have learned to be the requirements for something to be considered art. And while I was not expecting this discovery, retroactively it makes sense as the heart of what makes art what it is tends to be the message the piece is trying to get across, be it commentary on some systemic issue or simple data points.

To conclude this reflection, I would like to comment on which aspects of the program were the most beneficial in shaping what I took from the year. Most notably, it would have to be the peer workshop from this second semester. It allowed me to get closer to my peers that I had in the previous semester’s TA groups, and it just created an environment of support that let us learn from each other all while making our own interpretations on what art is based on our own observations in our workshop. My advice for anyone coming into a workshop would be to listen and pay attention to your peers, as everyone has some incredibly valuable skills, information, and tips that you can easily pick up on just by interacting with someone you may not have otherwise. Overall, I felt like this year was a great start to my college experience, and I look forward to seeing how it can improve going forward.