Week 1 Reflection

The goal we have set out for this week was to gather as many interviews as possible, begin outlining our documentary based on our collected interviews, and have a good head start on our poster. After a rollercoaster of a week, I can confidently say we have reached our goal. Starting off the week, we got started prepping our poster canvas so that, later on, when we have gathered and picked out our final interviews, we will quickly just put it on our prepared canvas. As my group—I, Claire, and Jack— are all passionate artists and have been on European Art Classroom, we excitedly put our skills into use and were already so pumped about this poster project in the first place. However, by the end of the week, when we took another look at the poster after a few days of not touching it, we realized that the background paper did not glue well onto the canvas and realized that for next week, we would need to take everything down, buy new paper, and start again. I looked back at the process and realized that we might’ve been a bit too hasty. Gluing our base on the street in New York was fun, but because we were out where we felt the need to work quickly, the resulting product was flimsy and will take up more of our time next week. Though we might need to work again, we now have a good idea of what our poster will look like and learned a lesson always to put a lot of thought and care into everything we do. We started nervous and shy during our interviewing process but later became more comfortable and enjoyed it. We came into the project with a fear of rejection and judgment. The first interview was the hardest as we had to work up the courage to finally come up to someone after a few months of anticipating and being nervous about this project. Though we all expected that there would be people who would not be open to interviews, going through it was still not easy. However, though the first step is the hardest, I learned that everything gets better after that. Talking to more and more people, I notice that we all have come to terms with rejection and easily move on after being turned down. By the end of the week, I am so happy with all of the responses we’ve gathered and am so excited for the final project. I enjoyed getting to know different people’s experiences and hearing all the advice people have given us. Overall, this week was a success. We’ve successfully set up our activities for next week: a week full of editing and poster work, thanks to our productive first week of interviews.