User:KatieManske

bio
Katie Manske currently resides in Seattle, WA, where she attends the Art Institute of Seattle, in pursuit of a BFA in Animation. She moved from Minnetonka, Minnesota three years ago to attend school, and plans to move back upon graduation. Katie specializes in 2-D animation, with a passion for illustration in many fields, including medical illustration.

final
Please see the GROUP 1 space in the Analytical Writing section. Our topic is Overpopulation, and I covered the viewpoints section.

reflective assessment
The thing I like most about liberal arts English classes is that they often involve a lot of class discussion. As I move on in my education, I find that often the quality of these discussions is dependent not only on the students, but on the teacher  as well, and I was pleasantly surprised that, in this class, both provided educated, interesting viewpoints. I am of the opinion that I learn best when I'm interested in the topic at hand, and have often found it difficult, through the needlessly easy general education classes at this school, to be as interested as I need to be to enjoy a course. However, this quarter presented a number of opportunities for enjoyable discussion, and covered a variety of topics both in and outside specific course content. I thoroughly appreciated the way that the principles of research and content presentation were tied into topics that extended into a variety of different topics. To be frank, the majority of new knowledge that I acquired came from either our group project, or the class videos. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that, as the class progressed, all of the group projects encountered similar issues and drew similar connections to one another. I'm a bit disappointed in the amount of work I was able to get done during the course. Had my quarter been a bit less insane, I would have liked to have worked harder to make our page more consistent in it's voice, and ensure that my group was on task. However, given the absences, lack of constant communication, and separate adult lives, I was pleased to see that, while perhaps not the same amount of output was generated, the group still seemed to learn a great deal about the topic. I was not initially excited to take this course, thinking it would be another mind numbing GE requirement to sail through, but was pleasantly surprised. The relaxed, open atmosphere made the class not only tolerable, but easy to get up for, and enjoyable.

Having now completed the course, if I could alter one thing, it would be the way the group dynamic was handled. I found it difficult to wrestle content out of four others whilst attempting to produce my own and deal with other classes on the side. This is a common issue found in many classes, but I think I little more pressure-- be it from weekly deadlines or simply more stern grading rubrics-- would have helped us be more organized and consistent. However, having the leisure to go about the topic as we saw fit, I think, allowed us to find the pieces that we truly appreciated in the research. I think having more workshops for our project, from beginning to end, would have helped shape the page into something more loft as well.

As a whole, I'm happy with what I got out of the class: I thorough respect for the avid researcher, some very engaging discussions, new tidbits of knowledge concerning various parts of the world we live in, and a fuller understanding of how truly complex and perplexing some of the world's major issues are.

KatieManske 04:48, 25 March 2009 (UTC)