–> Critical Reflection #6 Assignment: Final Reflection [CR6]

This reflection is an in-depth look back at the past 6 weeks in particular, but can also address aspects of Senior Project that took place before the experiential portion of your project. Take your time with these prompts, think deeply, write down responses or talk them through with a peer or adult, and try to answer as many of these as possible with detail. These questions are designed to help you reflect on your process and also to move you towards an understanding of what you want to share with your audience on Senior Project Evening.

Since the Covid-19 epidemic and Stay at Home orders has affected your original plan for your Senior Project Experience, please reflect on your current essential question.

Some general helpful prompts to think about may be:

— How has your essential question changed throughout the 6 weeks?

— What did you expect to learn and how does that compare to what you did learn?

— How do you anticipate this experience changing you or affecting you going forward?

— What do you most want others to know about your SP Experience?

5/22

Essential question: How can storytelling help me to examine the world around me?

My essential question stayed mostly the same throughout my experience, but my project shifted a lot. I asked a lot of questions in my process, but I had a hard time finding a way to address my essential question. Frequently, my project actually came in conflict with my question, even when I didn’t really notice. Eventually I decided I just had to pursue my essential question above any other aspects of my project. I think I would have saved myself a lot of uncertainty if I had done that from the start, but then again, I don’t know; maybe if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to reach the introspection I did. Since I developed my essential question before my project, my question was open-ended and imprecise. I wish the process had been the inverse, actually; thinking about what I’d be interested in doing and why, what I wanted to learn, and then developing an essential question from that, rather than coming up with a question and trying to design a project that could possibly answer it. While the challenges of this project could be rewarding, I found it very frustrating and a waste of time to be constantly having to shift my project to fit my essential question. My process for choosing a Senior Project was strained and rushed due in part to the coronavirus pandemic, and I think because of that, I chose a project that wasn’t the best for me. Because I was unable to really talk things through with teachers and peers, since we couldn’t meet in person, I found myself a little unmoored. Looking back, choosing a project in a subject I’ve done nothing with since the tenth grade for my final project at home during a global crisis was not a good idea. It took me a while to realize that. However, I’m happy with what came of it. I feel I did address my essential question by the end, and I was fascinated to discover that I seemed to have been doing it subconsciously. I think that this experience will change the way I look at writing in the future, especially creative writing in which the arguments or ideas aren’t overt as they are in analytical work. I think it’s interesting now to look at what an author put in intentionally to serve their point, and what may be a less direct expression of their worldview or reflection of the world around them. This, I think, will also change the way I write. Now that I can spot this more easily in my own work, I can write more intentionally to serve my point and my purpose for the story. What I learned in this project reminded me of complaints I’ve heard – and had – about perceived over-analysis of art. I went to a modern art museum when I was around ten and seeing an exhibit that was just a canvas painted white in a room painted the same color. I remember thinking, “No way someone got paid for this.” Outside the room was a plaque with a bloated explanation about the meaning and depth of the work, the profound statement of a blank painting on a blank wall. I thought that it made sense someone would get paid for that, and briefly considered a career in manufacturing meaning for absurd modern art pieces. That moment, though, left me with a question: can’t art just be pretty? As I’ve discovered in this project, the answer is no. That’s not because, as I thought, art needs some deeper meaning to qualify as art. It’s because when someone creates something, no matter what, a part of them goes into it. This applies to modern art, reminding me of the old back-and-forth surrounding simple modern art pieces that appear unskilled: the skeptic says, “A five-year-old could do that,’ and the artist responds, “Yeah, but they didn’t.” A five-year-old could make something similar and it would be meaningful and reflective of them. Just because anyone can do it doesn’t mean it’s not art.