Semester 1

This semester has been a complete whirlwind from start to finish, and it is very hard to believe that it’s already over. I feel like it’s taken forever but also only a few minutes to get to this point, and the end of classes really seemed to sneak up on me. Overall, I really enjoyed all of the classes that I took this semester, and the work and structure of the classes is about what I expected. I wasn’t anticipating the full lecture style that most of my classes were given in, but I found that I really enjoyed just listening to the professors talk about a subject that they were passionate about; I felt that I learned the most whenever one would go off topic and talk about how what we were discussing related to something else or to something current. With that, the class that had the most connections to Arts Scholars was definitely the service class that I took, CPSA149. It was a small group but we ended up becoming really close, and we were able to put to the test the service part of Arts Scholars through volunteer work throughout the semester. In CPSA100, I enjoyed our weekly meetings! Coming in I really had no ideas about what our colloquium would look like, so I was pleasantly surprised by all of the guest speakers and the work that we did throughout the semester. The field trips and pentathlon events really got me out of my comfort zone in some cases, whether it was to go see a play by myself or visit a new part of campus that I probably would not be able to go to otherwise.

As a student in the Cambridge Community, I’ve found my experience pretty similar to what I was expecting as a high school student. Dorm life can be lonely at first and I learned how important making friends with the people around you is at the beginning. Some aspects definitely helped me ease in a little bit more, like the fact that I was only twenty minutes from home and ended up going back almost every weekend for the first few weeks of school. In terms of COVID-19 responses, I think the university has fit most of my expectations. I was a bit put off at the beginning when it was established that masks were not going to be required in classes, and I continued to wear one through most of my lectures, and sometimes I was the only one. That was the only part that really made me just the slightest bit uncomfortable with the adjustment.

Looking back at this semester, I think the most impactful thing I learned in Arts Scholars was just how influential the arts can be on our lives. I’ve worked with the arts for most of my life, but I’ve never really paused to think about just how the arts have influenced me or how I view the world around me. Guest speakers Sam & Pepé were a big part of this realization, and being one of the few musicians who worked with them to write a song made me reflect on myself and my relationship with music and performing. I thought this was a super important skill that I learned, and it will definitely help me in future performances and when working with other professionals.

Semester 2

The time that it takes to adjust to college is something that differs from person to person, but something that made that period of transition a lot easier was the ability to connect with my professors. It isn’t always easy to go up and introduce yourself to them, but I did that with some my first semester and with others I took multiple classes with them over the course of the year so I got to know them that way. In Arts Scholars specifically, I had the opportunity to take CPSA149, which is a service learning class led by Harold, and we were a small group and got to know each other as well as Harold. Along with this, I knew a few of the TAs before becoming part of the program, which also helped with maintaining those relationships. I think what worked best for me is taking the time to maintain communication with my professors, whether that be by asking them questions about assignments or programs within my major.

As I mentioned in my first semester reflection, dorm life can get lonely at times. One thing that helped me initially was going to a Scholars-specific orientation; most of the people who live on my floor in Bel Air were at that orientation, so it made getting to know people a little bit easier! In Arts Scholars too, I think that by the end of the year we’ve all gotten closer as a group, and it’s like a little club. The biggest challenges are reaching out in the beginning, but when you find people who like the same things as you or participate in the same art that you do it can bring around fun topics of conversation and make it easier to get to know each other. I also think that the workshops that we participated in in Arts Scholars this semester were really helpful in this way; the groups were small, and allowed us to branch out creatively and in our relationships with other Arts Scholars members. For next year’s students, I would say do not be afraid to reach out to anyone. Everyone else is adjusting with you, and in the Arts program it is fun to play around with different art forms or one that you’re comfortable with, and you can meet a lot of new people through that!

As I’ve mentioned throughout this reflection, the Arts Scholars program really gave me an opportunity to step outside of my comfort zone in terms of engaging with art. There are forms of art that I never would have thought to try, like voguing or creating a children’s book, but I really enjoyed all of it! The program also gave me the opportunity to engage with art outside of the campus community. I was able to volunteer with Justice Arts Coalition, an organization with a goal of sharing the art of incarcerated artists based in Maryland. This really encouraged a personal reflection of how I examined and consumed art, as a lot of the art that I handled while volunteering was personal and emotional to the person who created it and they were really vulnerable in sharing their experiences in that way. In the future, I’d love to keep working with Arts Scholars in any way that I can! I am going to be a peer mentor next year, and in the years following I would definitely like to remain connected to the program somehow.

Coming into college, I think my perception of ‘art’ was a little narrow. There is a lot that I got to experience through Arts Scholars that I wouldn’t have considered art, but my definition of art has expanded along with my creativity by being part of this program. Art is for everyone, and it connects everyone, and engaging with art is something that can be deeply personal as well as communal. Everything is up to personal interpretation, and my experience in the Arts program really allowed me to learn that lesson. ArtsFest, which occurred during Maryland Day at the end of the year, was really the culmination of all of this. Getting to see everyone's capstone and workshop projects was an awesome feeling, and it demonstrated the ability of the students and program members to find art in any part of life. My appreciation of different kinds of art forms has definitely grown as well, and through events such as pentathlon and some of the field trips I got to engage with a lot of art that I would not have been able to otherwise.

Arts Scholars is definitely the most chill (for lack of a better term!) Scholars program. Everything that we did in colloquium, all of the field trips and workshops, and the pentathlon events that I got to go to all provided a well-needed break from the stress of the rest of my school work, and really encouraged me to go out and see where I could find art around campus! The field trips and pentathlon events were definitely some of my favorite parts of this year, and are things that I am really grateful to have gotten to experience. One of my favorite pentathlon events ended up being an opera at the Clarice, and it was the first opera performance I’d ever been to, but I really ended up enjoying it. For incoming Arts Scholars students, I would say the best thing to do is make sure you’re choosing things that you know would be fun and exciting, but don’t be afraid to branch out and experience other forms of art that you wouldn’t normally try!

Semester 3

This semester has gone by so quickly, and I can’t believe we’re heading into the home stretch of Arts Scholars! One of the biggest things I think I’ve learned this semester is how to mitigate my creative process into something that feels more like fun and less like work, and along with this, how I can effectively incorporate feedback from my peers into that process. This semester we’ve been working primarily on our capstone projects, and there has been a lot of work that has gone into it but because I chose a topic to focus on that I enjoy learning about and am excited to work with, it’s been relatively enjoyable in the research and development stages. We’ve also received a lot of feedback from our peers, and in the past, it’s been difficult for me to accept someone’s critique or questioning of my work, so this semester was a lot of learning how this feedback can be beneficial and how I can apply it towards creating a final product that I am passionate for and proud of which also meets the capstone guidelines and is appealing to an audience.

The supporting courses that I’ve taken alongside Arts Scholars through the last three semesters have been some of my favorites that I’ve taken in college. My first ever college class was MUSC205, The History of Popular Music from 1950-Present, and it was one of the most interesting classes I’ve taken to date! I realized through that class how much I enjoyed learning about music and music history, and now that topic is what my capstone project is going to be based on. Along with this, I took INAG110, a public speaking course, which ended up being very beneficial to me as someone who does not enjoy speeches or speaking in front of a crowd. This course has also showed me how creativity and art can appear in places we don’t expect; it required me to think of out-of-the-box ideas for speech topics and creative ways to convey the information within my speech, and considering each topic as an individual work of art helped to make that process a lot smoother and more methodical for me.

My experience in this living-learning program has been very significant to my college career so far. I’ve met so many new people who I now consider great friends through the program and through working as a Peer Mentor this semester, and I’ve been able to engage with so many other forms of art that my peers have brought to the table that I would probably never have engaged with otherwise. Arts Scholars really is a community that fosters incredibly unique relationships, and I’ve really enjoyed my time in the program and the people I’ve met because of it. As I mentioned, I was able to work as a Peer Mentor starting over the summer for the Scholars program, and this has allowed me to interact with the freshman class and help with that transition from high school into college that I know I struggled with a bit last year! It’s been so rewarding for me to contribute to the Scholars community in this way, and I’ve really enjoyed getting to know the younger students and being able to relive, in a way, my first semester of college in the Arts program through their eyes. I wish I had been able to contribute a bit more in terms of encouraging younger Scholars to step out of their comfort zones with things such as their Tryathlon events or their final projects for their first semester.

Being in Scholars has definitely brought me into contact with people and ideas that challenged my previous beliefs and opinions. It’s broadened my perspective on what art is and what makes art personal and impactful, and meeting so many different people with such different backgrounds has required me to reflect on my personal relationship with art and how my art is perceived by others around me. I believe there is value in exploring perspectives that may differ from your own because this forces you out of your comfort zone and helps you to recognize that different people who come from different backgrounds are not always going to hold the exact same beliefs as you, or they are not going to perceive something the same way you do. Hearing someone else’s definition of art, for example, which could differ completely from my personal definition, causes me to reflect and consider how their background and personal experiences have shaped or influenced their perspective. It makes me feel more human, in a way, through recognizing that each person is so unique from each other, and it is these differences that really make the world go round.

Semester 4

I believe I’ve said this for the last three reflections I’ve done, but this semester went by so fast, and I am so proud of the work that I was able to do on my capstone as well as the things that everyone else created for ArtsFest. It was such a joy to see everyone’s ideas come together and to see the final products, and I really enjoyed being able to grow and learn with some incredible people around me. I’ve really enjoyed my time in this program, and there are so many things I’ve been able to learn as a result which I will definitely carry with me throughout the rest of my college career and well into the future.

One of the aspects of keeping this ePortfolio throughout the last few semesters is that I have been able to grow in communicating my ideas, as well as my writing skills. Assignments such as my pentathlon/tryathlon have required me to think critically about the art that I consumed for them, and to think of ways that I could relate it back to my major or to Scholars. This has been really helpful in allowing me to better voice my thoughts on art, as well as what types of events can fit the definition of ‘art’. My personal definition of ‘art’ has definitely changed throughout my time in this program as a result of the experiences I’ve been able to have. Through the many different field trips I was able to go on, from Cirque du Soleil in my first semester, the Van Gogh Experience in my second, and the Library of Congress in my third, as well as the two trips to New York City, I’ve been able to see and engage with many different kinds of art, such as dance, digital, photography, music, and writing, among many others. The in-class events as well, such as vogue dancing and African drumming, have showcased just how diverse artistic skills can be, and I feel as though I’ve also learned that engaging with these types of art is so important in order to approach life in a well-rounded and holistic way.

In the process of developing my capstone project, I learned a lot about the creative process and steps that can be taken to help with that process or to help with organizing my thoughts. One of the main things I used a lot was rapid prototyping and iteration, which allowed me to get all of my ideas down in a short period of time and then go back and see which ones worked well or which ones I could discard. This helped me to sort through all of my thoughts and ideas, and ultimately I think this made the process of designing my final magazine a lot easier. These techniques were really helpful to know, and I’ll definitely apply them to future projects. Along with my capstone, I was also able to take a workshop based on Craftivism (the intersection between crafts and activism), and as a result of that I was able to work with a lot of hands-on art mediums, including cross-stitch, embroidery, quilting, and crochet. Through this workshop I was able to explore all of these new art forms that I had never tried before, and I ended up really loving some of them. This experience definitely expanded my creative interests, as well as my abilities, as now I know how to properly thread a needle for stitching (among other things, of course)!

Arts Scholars has been so amazing in bringing me into contact with people who are so talented in so many different ways. I learned a lot about other mediums of art by observing and providing feedback on others’ projects throughout this semester, and getting feedback in return from people with different artistic backgrounds was really beneficial in the long run to the success of my project because it allowed me to look at it from different perspectives. Along with this, looking back on my entire experience, I can see a lot of cases where my artistic skills combined with others to create something really cool. An example of this that stands out to me is when we got into groups to create a short stop-motion film last semester; all four of us in my group had different ideas and backgrounds, but we all were able to work together to create a really cool final product.

My experiences in Arts Scholars will definitely inform my future and the lessons that I’ve learned throughout my time in the program I think will stick with me for a long time. I learned a lot about myself, and what works best for me when I’m working on a long-term project; this knowledge will be important if I get a job I am aiming for in a museum or in archiving, where organization and creativity are key skills. Academically, I learned a lot this semester about how to set reasonable benchmarks for myself and how to spread out a project so I am not procrastinating on it, which is something that I have always struggled with figuring out; these skills will be so important as I enter my last two years of college and as I’m working on future papers and projects. I’m so incredibly thankful for my time in this program and for all of the people who have supported me and provided me with feedback throughout these two years and in the last semester as we tackled our capstone projects. It was so cool to see everyone’s final projects after working alongside them for so long, and I was able to create a lot of important friendships and connections that have been foundational to my college experience. I can’t wait to see where things I’ve learned from this program pop up in my future!