This reflection (a double-length 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.
Re-read all your previous documentation posts, including your previous Critical Reflections.
- Take a look back at your essential question. Did you answer it? Do you think that question was a good frame for your Senior Project? If not, how would you phrase that question now?
- You had a sense of what you would learn and do during Senior Project. Did you have to adjust your expectations?
- Did you meet your goal(s) for Senior Project? Explain in detail.
- What challenges did you face throughout your project? How did you overcome those challenges?
- What risks did you take, especially for those who created a product? How did those risks pay off?
- What growth or understanding did you experience through Senior Project? How has the experience changed you, or your concept of yourself? Consider skills, attitudes, habits, resources, capabilities,, etc. Are you more confident of your abilities?
- What surprises did you experience? What were the unexpected moments of learning or experience?
- What questions has Senior Project raised for you? (Personal, institutional, philosophical, global, etc.)
- Has your Senior Project experience influenced your future planning in terms of work, education, or the development of personal interests?
- When you reflect on the entire process, of what are you most proud? Least?
- What would you do differently if you could do Senior Project again?
- What was the hardest aspect of the Senior Project process and experience? Most rewarding?
- What is the one thing you want your audience to learn or understand from your presentation on Senior Project Evening?
- How might you demonstrate your learning?
As I approach the end of the Senior Project Experience, I feel myself left with more questions than answers, a newfound desire to explore more forms of art, and a slight irritation with myself for not having everything together in the way that I thought I would. I don’t think I really wrote my essential question as an inquiry meant to be answered, rather a guidepost for an ongoing, even lifelong exploration of Inferno and myself. In that case, I think it was a good frame for my project because I definitely don’t feel “finished” with it. Coming into Senior Project, I thought that everyday would be a beautifully intense flurry of creative pursuits, many sleepless nights spent working, and in the end an engaging and abundant array of work to show for it. My expectations weren’t really a reality for me at all. I have had to adjust my expectations significantly during the past month or so, and while it’s been extremely challenging for me to face some truths, this time has been especially transformative for me, and, in a weird way, I’m very thankful for it. I have not come very close to reaching my goals for the end of Senior Project, particularly the one where I said I would have thirty-four projects finished for the final presentation… Oops. I really struggled with developing a healthy relationship between myself and creative work, and while I don’t think I achieved that goal at all, I do believe that I am moving through it, as I probably will for the rest of my life. By the end, I have gathered lots of insight into people’s experiences with Inferno, and I am eternally eager to speak to more people about it. By the end, the interview portion was one of the most special and rewarding parts of this experience. The past couple of months have been particularly challenging for me mental-health wise, so that was and is definitely a challenge I am working through. I spent a lot of the experience battling these challenges and they definitely bled into my project, making it feel almost impossible sometimes to get things done. At the end of it all, I feel a bit of sadness about the fact that I spent much of my project feeling that way and not feeling like the enthusiastic, motivated person I wanted to be. However, I also feel a lot of joy and pride about the really significant adjustments I have made during this time and the work I have done to heal myself. I feel that in the past week I have taken more risks creatively, employing a new attitude of just going with the flow. I spent most of Senior Project debilitatingly stressed out, and overthinking everything, but now I feel myself developing a greater appreciation for the messy, imperfect things that sometimes come out of me. Right now, I am still unraveling the ideas I have for presenting my project and learning, but I’m thinking I might put all of my work in the gallery with brief descriptions of their purpose in the context of Inferno and my own life. I also want to include a list I made of the works that people I interviewed said they perceived traces of Inferno in.