With the blink of an eye, my time in Scholars has come to an end. Today is December 12th, 2021 and I have one more day left in the fall semester. I'm sitting in my dorm room in Cumberland Hall, and I can't help but be excited for the future. It's five o'clock and we're nearing winter, which means that the sun is setting. Darkness is enclosing in for the night, but as it does, an ombre of pink and orange and red have colored in the horizon. When I see a sunset as beautiful as tonight's, I know that the darkness will be here within a matter of minutes. But, I also know that it is a sign of tomorrow. A sign of a sunrise, a sign of a new day, a sign of another ombre sky. That's how I'm choosing to look at the end of my Scholars experience.
Media. Self. Society.
Society.
It's always easy to talk about others around us, so let's talk about Society. I think everyone can easily define what society is. But, what is society in "Media, Self and Society?" Society is the world we live in, the people who surround us. Society creates media. Society reacts to media. But most importantly, society is influenced by media. Or better known as the cultivation theory. We as a society see media, and we let it change us. This was probably one of my favorite topics to talk about in class. I talked a lot about in my presentation about why the movie Black Panther is revolutionary. In this presentation, I focused on the importance of seeing yourself in media. In both scholars and my children's literacy class, we talked about this idea of windows and mirrors. When society looks at media, are they looking through a window and seeing the world around them? And are they looking into a mirror and seeing themselves? To be frank, when people of color from our society watch media, they often times are not looking at themselves, neither are they really looking through a window and seeing the world around them. Something huge that I wanted to get across in that presentation was that when society looks at media and either does not see themselves or negative representations of themselves, it does not have a good outcome. It makes people of color think they have fewer choices in life because they're displayed as only a few things in the media. That's why Black Panther had such a big affect on our society: it showed black boys an girls that they were more than the world made them out to be.
Self.
When I consume media, do I see myself? Not really, but we already discussed that. I think something important that I learned about media in this program was that we all have the ability to create media, including myself. In fact, it's become it's own career! That's not a career I'm interested in, but in a way, I do want to create media on the side. I just never realized that it was considered media until I joined media scholars. I love writing. I also love photography. I love photograph so much that I made a separate instagram account for the pictures I take (follow me! @picsbyliv02 on insta!). I love writing so much that often times it distracts me from getting my actual homework done. Now, I may not have published any of my writing, which technically disqualifies it from being media, but I still have my photography account on instagram. I never really thought of it as me creating media until this class. One big thing I learned is that we all have a part to play in media, and that surprisingly includes myself. Media plays another role my life as well: I consume way too much of it. I think a lot of gen z has the same problem. I do not create nearly as much media as I consume. It is so easy to lie in bed at night and just scroll through TikTok thoughtlessly.
So many people, including myself, scroll through TikTok and consume this media that not only conforms us, but conforms to us. It literally pays attention to what you watch so that it can show you more similar videos. Even though that is probably my favorite part of the app, it is the most lethal part of it. Scholars has showed me that I am not the only one to fall for TikTok's lethal tricks. Because TikTok and other social medias keep so many of us glued to our screens, it makes me pose this question: Is it better to create media or be consumed by it?
Media.
Last, but certainly not least, media. Something that none of us truly can avoid. It is all around us. It is on our phones. On our laptops. On our TVs. In our books. It. Is. Everywhere. The only way to avoid it would be to live under a rock. And no one wants to do that. I gained a new definition of media over the past three semesters. I won't lie to you, I chose this Scholars program for the New York City trip. I thought it would just be about news and the process of it going from the studio to the television.
Boy was I wrong.
This class was, it is so much more. I hate to admit this, but before this class, the only thing I thought of as media was the news. That has to be the biggest thing I learned this semester. I don't think I could sit down and give you a word for word definition of media, but I could tell you the things that fall under its umbrella. Before this class, I definitely did not see my favorite book or my favorite tv show or even my favorite song as media. If I had to define it, I would say that media is anything shared through some sort of medium. What that medium is is up to you. But like I said earlier, media is unavoidable. You, in fact, are consuming media right now. Since media is unavoidable, it means that the way we consume it and what we consume in media is important. As I stated earlier, I consume a lot of my media through TikTok. And if I were to take a guess, I would guess that most people consume their media on social media these days. This is another subject that we talked about in Media Scholars. Earlier, I mentioned windows and mirrors and how we can apply the affects of it to media and ourselves. It's true for social media as well, and it is causing a problem worldwide. In Media Scholars, we watched countless videos of how social media was affecting younger people drastically. Young people/kids are seeing unrealistic perfect bodies on Instagram that look nothing like their own (no mirrors) and this causes them to have a depleted self worth. Parent's scroll through Facebook and see other parents living "perfect" lives with their "perfect" children which leads them to think they're doing something wrong. Whether we like it or not, media has an affect on us all.
Learning that in Media Scholars made me realize that Fox and CNN are not the only types of media to have a bad affect on society.
My Experience
My first year of Media Scholars was not what I imagined, and not only because of the new view of media the class was creating for me. COVID kept us all home. It kept us locked to our computer screens, attempting to make connections over an app you may have heard of: Zoom. It was not the greatest way to start off my college career. I had no friends (at UMD). I spent my entire day sitting at my desk in my bedroom while staring at a screen. I think everyone at some point of that year felt depressed from the monotone experience. College wasn't what it promised to be. And honestly, neither was Media Scholars. No field trips. No in person teachings. No living together (what even is a living learning community if there is no community living together???). All of these hopes that I had for myself seemed lost. Academically, I was doing good. That was the easiest part of it all. And the hardest?
Being alone.
I didn't dare lean my hopes into the fall of 2021. COVID could hit again and we'd be back at square one. Thankfully, that did not happen. Yes, we had to wear masks, but personally that didn't bother me. Being in the classroom vs being on zoom is something that shouldn't even be compared. The classroom felt so much more engaging and opening.
Even though I usually didn't participate in those whole class discussions, I listened, and most of the time it was pretty interesting. It was enjoyable to hear what other people were getting out of media and their opinions on the news that we'd heard from the Eye Opener. But I don't know if any part of this program truly changed me. I feel as if most universities tend to have a bias view of the world, and most of the time, so do their students. I think UMD is the same way. I can't really think of anytime when people disagreed with one another. Yes, the topics were engaging and good things to talk about, but I would have to say, most of the time people had similar opinions. Because of that, my opinions never really shifted because it was almost as if I was told they didn't need to. I think the thing inside me that shifted the most was just my view on what media is.
My Future
With my practicum, I struggled to connect media to it. I was a camp counselor this summer, and was able to use that for my practicum. Going into it, I had no idea how I would incorporate media into it or even into my future as a teacher. Having to think like a Media Scholar, I realized it was a lot easier than I thought. When it comes to my future as a teacher, I think media can and will play a vital role in my classroom. By knowing what media my students are interested in, I can form an environment where they feel comfortable. I can connect with them by putting on their favorite (appropriate) songs. I think another huge way media can play a role in teaching is how teachers form their lessons. If we know kids are engaging in certain types of media like TikTok, give them projects where they have to record a short video or make a dance about what they learned. I want to make learning fun for kids because I had so many teachers that gave up on that side of teaching. Media also plays an important role because of the windows and mirrors aspect of teaching. It is important to know your audience in any career you choose, and that is especially true to teaching. I want to give these kids the windows and mirrors that so much of the media they consume does not give them. That means putting diverse books onto my classroom bookshelf. It means teaching about historic figures other than white men. It means that my books about African Americans shouldn't just be about slavery or my books about latinos shouldn't just be about immigration. We've shown kids enough struggles and they have been through enough struggles of their own. Media has the opportunity to make a huge difference in a classroom, and it is up to the teacher to put that media in front of their students. Media Scholars has taught me that I can do that. I can make the difference. I can show them the windows and mirrors.
Goodnight Today, Good morning tomorrow
Media Scholars took me on a journey that I never really expected to take. I learned things that I had never thought about before. Now, it's almost nine o'clock. It's still Sunday, yet it is dark outside. The ombre sky has disappeared. After the ceremony next semester, Media Scholars will disappear into the night for me. I won't have the opportunity to take another media class. I won't see any of the people in Media Scholars again. But honestly, that's okay. The sun sets everyday. But at every cloudless sunset, we get those ombre colors against the horizon that remind us that saying goodbye can be a beautiful thing. It is a beautiful thing because it means saying hello to something new tomorrow. Seeing the sun rise in the morning doesn't mean forgetting about the ombre sky from the night before. The same thing goes for Scholars and my future. We will have our beautiful ombre goodbye and our individual sunrises, but we won't forget each other. We won't forget the things we learned. We won't forget what it meant to be a Media Scholar.
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