Reflection on Media Project A.
From emphasising the pursuit of meeting people, and blogging about the experience, I have learned a few things that can be divided into technical skills, social skills and social observations.
In terms of technical skills, I am referring to the blogging process itself – the setting up and maintenance of a blog. In trying to format posts and the layout, I have picked up some very basic HTML coding skills relating to colour schemes, fonts, font formatting the paragraphing (ie. < /Span > ).
Aside from this technical sidebar, the process of meeting people -really paying attention to meeting people- has thrown up some interesting considerations of life and people. I have found that I meet less people than I would have objectively thought otherwise. I find this is because there is a tendency for one to stay within our comfort zone, and not engage with the unknown, and unknown people. This is a facet of human nature that others exercise also, so meeting people, although objectively should be easy, is stymied by both sides of the equation. This is something that I foreshadowed in my statement of intention, but something I definitely found was true in practice. I found that people are often quite disinterested in interaction and conversation. I feel this is because it was because a pervasive part of society to just keep to oneself.
Further, I found it interesting being female and facing the prospect of my friendly advances being misinterpreted. This actually held me back somewhat in some situations. All in all, it's harder to meet people than one might think. Also what it really means to 'meet' someone became a point of debate within myself, and ultimately I just began to focus on finding interactions with people that were deeper than just 'hello'.
Along the way I have encountered some good conversation and I believe the project has increased my social skills in terms of confidence and openness in situations, and also techniques of 'ice-breaking' and being receptive to peoples ideas and demeanours. I have really improved my listening skills.
I feel as though I am satisfied with my project. Although, I do wish I could have conducted my 'meeting-party'. I found though that the idea just kept getting put back and put back due to other social/work/university commitments. I did try, in its stead, to take advantage of other social situations and their people-meeting opportunities.
To improve my project, I probably would spend more time on it. It was easy to place emphasis on other university subjects. This may have been to the benefit of those classes, but a detriment to some posts that could have been made about people that have ultimately been left out of the blog. In hindsight, I should have been more systematic and structured in my approach to the project. These are considerations that I will take into account when I undertake Media Project B next semester.
Overall, it has been an interesting project to undertake and it was opened my eyes somewhat to the dynamics that govern social interactions, and I have definitely met more people, and some odd, wonderful ones at that.
Monique Miller, 25 May 2011.
