Reflection Essay

The Project: The documentary project was one of the more challenging, but worthwhile, assignments I've ever worked on. There were many different challenging aspects to the project, from deciding what the documentary would be about at the beginning, to figuring out when to meet and work together on it. Overall, though, I think the biggest struggle was trying to narrow down all of our various different options and settle on one focused topic about Keeneland. It took us a while and was very hard to narrow it down to one main issue or topic out of so many different potential routes. I am most proud of the way our group worked together and got everything done as a team. Nothing was done without consulting the entire group first and no one was ever left out of the decision making process; everyone contributed. Overall, we are very proud of our work as a unit and the end product we were able to create. There are a couple aspects I would change about the documentary if I could. There were a few more shots that I had in mind for the film that we couldn't get because of time constraints and unavailability. I was personally responsible for a few different things. Overall, the Keeneland documentary was my idea so I tried to take on a natural leadership role and try to organize meetings and individual roles. I was also partly responsible for going to Keeneland and filming and interviewing. I also edited the film and audio and put them together. Overall, I feel like I contributed my fair share to the group and I tried to take on the role as the leader and keep everyone focused and motivated. Our group message helped to keep a good mood and attitude among the group and our regular meetings helped keep us focused and on track with the project. The Class: Some of the readings we did our blog posts on were very insightful and definitely had an impact on my view of the world and society. Some of them forced me to evaluate my own opinions and beliefs and see how they differed from the way the real world actually operates. Overall, I had a pretty decent knowledge of Keeneland and its history, but the project helped me gain quite a bit of information about it, as interviewing some of the people who worked there gave us a lot of insight into the horse park. I think the class helped me with my public speaking overall. I am usually a pretty confident speaker anyway, but taking this class and receiving feedback and tips for my public speaking definitely helped me improve. I undoubtedly preferred doing speeches rather than writing essays. I think the class did a good job of emphasizing my strengths as a student and communicator. My confidence in my speaking abilities showed in the class, and my leadership and teamwork abilities showed in the documentary project. Overall, it was a laid back class and that also played to my strengths, as I work better in those kinds of situations. Overall, I thought this class was a blast and it's honestly hard for me to name an element or aspect that I didn't like about it. I guess the blogs didn't feel like they were as important to the class or my grade as I was doing them, or looking back on them. Maybe more focus on the societal topics of the class would make it more engaging and make the blog posts seem more important. Overall though, I liked pretty much everything about this class.