Blog #2: End

As the course is coming to an end, I have significant takeaways that I will further discuss later on. But if there is a key realization, it is how I perceive this course as one of the challenging ones–yes, I may or may not be talking about programming. Going firstly with the strengths of this course, I would definitely say it is the professor, Sir Al. Without trying to sugarcoat or gloss over things, I can say that he is one of the gearing factors that I think makes this course and its learning curve different than any other. He is direct, objective, meticulous, and undeviating. Although he has all these attributes that one may consider to be cold or something that would make you not want to speak up because you are afraid that you might say something wrong and get called out, I always tell myself that this is because he knows what he is doing. He is passionate about the world of audio, and he wants us to learn from it. He says all these deep-seated things as he knows his craft, and wants to transpire the same knowledge to us while raising the bar high for his students—this reflects on his way of scrutinizing our work, especially of going the extra mile of sharing external resources, general feedback, and interacting in the course map. 

I admit, I may have fallen under my own trap of realization that his intimidating nature can cause students to be scared to reach out or interact with fellow students, and even more with Sir Al. This is actually me—and this is the weakness that I consider upon my walkthrough in this course. 

In all transparency, although I am not saying this to gain pity or vent out, just a mere fact, this is one of the biggest reasons why I was scared to post in bonus activities even if I wanted to, or needed to. I was already a step ahead in thinking that he may not like the quality of my work and receive negative feedback for it. Because of this unhealthy cycle, I continued to shy away from posting, and just tried my best to give my all out in individual activities instead. This was a mistake and I hope I could take this lesson for myself in future forums or activities, where I would be brazen enough to merely interact with people, or people with intimidating nature, especially if they will give me constructive feedback after all. As I am typing this, I have yielded a resolution that really, you will never know unless you try. Those missed opportunities of wanting to post in bonus activities or ask Sir Al thousands of questions because of my genuine interest and curiosity in learning audio may have been tremendously helpful, and could quite, in fact, help me in the long run. 

As stated earlier, I made sure to give leeway for growth in individual activities. Albeit having little interactions with my classmates, I made sure that I would compensate these peer activities to my outputs, where I would give my best effort to ponder what I have learned in the technicalities of audio. If I may share,  I was thankful, and still am, because this was the only course that validated how I wanted to try and attempt writing freely, without having to care about sounding too professional and formal. I was scared to do it because of its potential drawback in my grade. However, MMS 172 and Sir Al were different, as these blogs and assignments became my safe space because I truly felt validated where I felt like my yapping had sense and would actually make use in the academic setting. 

Going back, all these activities and reading internal and external resources really did bear something in me—judging from the little to no knowledge I had about audio in my self-introduction forum. Now, I have even caught myself recently listening to songs and watching TikToks where I would criticize the audio and say, “tunog lata yung audio,” “ang boomy naman neto,” “synths kaya to? recorded kaya ‘yung instruments?” “considered boomy na kaya yung sound na to,”  and the like—as I am still in the learning process of whether the audio sounds right enough or not. Amidst also learning just the mere basics of it. Honestly, I first started with an outlook in this course that this is just like the conventional system of forums, assignments, and quizzes. But I was proven otherwise when I really had a gulp of my expectations but was happy that the frustrations of learning audio, genuinely led to my curiosity of learning it even more. 

Moving on, when it comes to learning, UPOU hardly has any face-to-face meetings. When the opportunity struck, however, I was not able to go last MMS 172 F2F session because of an important commitment I had during that time. This just testifies that I am more than willing in the next group sessions in the future—this also applies to other courses in BAMS! We need social interaction as individuals part of society, I guess. 😀

Even if I was not able to attend any F2F sessions for this course, an opportunity actually came along the way, where I had the chance to interact with my classmates, even if it was just in a virtual setting. This was because of Bonus Activity #4, where I got to communicate with three of my classmates, who are even from the same batch as mine. It was a great opportunity as I rarely interact with people online, aside from academic matters, of course. In this sense, this defied the physical barriers of online learning and actually got to meet friends along the way. 

Next, speaking of activities, I check the portfolios of my classmates from time to time to see the progress that they have made and enthusiastically browse how they perform in this course. It is somehow a therapy to go into their works and feel happy when I get to read their entries, especially on their introductory page, as I rarely get to know the BAMS community on a deeper level, as I would just merely see them from another course and acknowledge them as my classmate—no more, no less. I get to know them indirectly, especially in their self-introduction forums where I get a glimpse of their music tastes. On the other hand, output-wise, seeing the good quality works positively pressure me into pushing myself to do more and do better. Admittedly, most of the projects I have listened to were them singing. I felt sort of yearning and desirous that I also had a singing voice as good as theirs, where I would just casually pull up my microphone and sing my heart away. Imagine effortlessly singing to any song you wished, I guess it is just an imagination for me. 😅 Not to mention, I was also wistful how most of them know how to play instruments—maybe this could be something I could focus on, given the privilege of time and resources :D

Overall, despite the fact that audio is just one of the aspects that one can practice in plunging into multimedia, the takeaways I had throughout MMS 172 genuinely (word mentioned for the nth time) made me want to pursue or at least learn about audio more—even if graphic design is what I cling and interest in the most. Recalling my statement before, I have mentioned that buying audio equipment was not really my first line of choice while taking up this course. I have said to myself that I would try my best to make use of what I have, as I initially had no interest in digging deep into audio. I also had the preconception that buying a microphone would just be a one-time use. But upon reading my previous entries, I did end up buying a microphone and had no regrets because while considered expensive, it is already relatively cheap compared to the high-end ones that professionals use. Ergo, I considered my bought equipment an investment, as my audio quality in other works related to audio has never been better. 

To finish off this blog. There is only one statement that would probably sum up how I felt throughout this journey: From one of the least priorities to something truly worth considering. I am thankful for MMS 172 for changing my perception of audio.