During the fall semester, both the studio and seminar class have reinforced each other for me and challenged me in various ways. In fact, I have learned a lot from these two classes since they are cooperated and connected with each other. When the purpose of the studio class is to make different kinds of projects, the seminar class mainly focuses on exploring the main idea based on what kind of project we have done and extending more about writing skills. In other words, I realize that Seminar is a class for me to improve my skills in reading and writing based on a specific theme or topic. Every time we work on a project in Studio, we also have to write a reflection or annotation that is relevant to the topic of the project in order to have a better understanding of what we should do there. This sometimes is challenging for me, however, I also learn from these challenges and acquire much more knowledge to work better in the future.
The most challenge assignment in this seminar was to write short story based on interviews we did at the Washington Square Park. We were required to work as a group and came up an imaginary character that we chose from out interviews. Then we had to combine our imaginary figures together and make up our own short story. In fact, it is a little hard for our group to connect each of our characters at first, because our characters do not have much in common. Therefore, all of us had to work on our characters and compose a story that fit these characters. During this process, I found writing a short story was challenging and group work played a key role in studying for a certain topic. By working with my group members, I learned that we are supposed to use multiple perspectives or stand in others’ shoes to think and feel more of what others feel. We were not individual when we were going to do a group project. In addition, the most satisfying thing for me was the group working. Although I always prefer working alone, both Studio and Seminar provided me with some opportunities to work with others and learn from each other. I also made lots of friends by working together in these classes and we all hope we could work together in the future.
Since I would like to major in fashion design in the future, I think the most importance lesson I gain from these two classes is that I need to consider more on how I make sense of my ideas while making things and try my best to make great effort on everything. As a matter of fact, both studio and seminar share a common concept, Memoir, which could either be an abstraction or something happened in the real life. I have learned that memory could shape our understanding of identity and the world when we process our memory to communicate, recollect, or remember someone or something. Especially, because different people have different memories in their life, memories can be regarded as diverse personal experiences for people to utilize as a tool to express themselves. In this case, I would like to combine my own memory or my own experiences with what I have learned from the studio and seminar class to create a variety of designs that define myself or others.
