Kiley Clements
Arts Scholar
Semester 1 Reflection
December 15, 2020
As I finish up my first semester at the University of Maryland, I now reflect upon the many experiences, memories, and lessons I’ve learned across these few months. I had certain expectations of what my first semester at college would be like, and those expectations were wildly different from reality; I imagined tons of new friends, joining cool clubs, going to wild parties, and living in a dorm with a roommate. Unfortunately, due to circumstances I’d never in a million years think would happen, I actually spent my first semester half at home and half in a lonely one-person dorm room, without going to more than ten lectures or a single on-campus event. The COVID-19 pandemic altered life in nearly facet imaginable, and to say my college experience was flipped upside-down would be an understatement.
Thankfully, despite all of the difficulties the virus made for college, the College Park Scholars Arts program was a little ray of sunshine in my cloudy skies. The material was very refreshing and lively, and I was happy to connect with students similar to me even if it was only through my laptop screen. I expected my college classes to be excruciatingly stressful, but the Scholars program surprised me by being the perfect bit of challenge, not mind-numbingly easy nor back-breakingly hard. I also took an intro to drawing class, so I was glad I could practice my favorite medium of art alongside being engaged in the Arts scholars curriculum. One key takeaway lesson that surprised me from Arts scholars was the focus on activism alongside arts; it was a very vocal year in terms of activism, so seeing art connect with something straight out of the real world was pleasantly unexpected in the best way possible.
Now that I have lived through my first semester of college during a global pandemic, the way I view expectations of myself and my upper education experience have shifted. What I once envisioned for myself in college when I was in high school is, at least for the moment, not very realistic, so I must now alter what plans I have in mind in order to successfully achieve them. Making friends and interacting with the campus is a lot more difficult nowadays, so I have made smaller goals for myself in terms of reaching out and getting connected. I was rather lonely living by myself on campus, so hopefully this time as a vaccine becomes more and more likely a reality I will be more comfortable leaving my room, talking to friends, or even living with roommates.
The University of Maryland blew me away in terms of how committed they were in trying to alleviate the spread of COVID-19, especially so in the massive promotion of their 4Maryland campaign and by penalizing students who broke the rules. So I hope next semester that dedication to safety remains just as strong, especially as cases rise every day.
Out of all the things I learned in Arts scholars, I think that the Fandango event was one of the most thought-provoking. It was interesting learning how storytelling can breach into other forms of art, especially that of music, and the hosts of the Fandango event were excellent in making that concept all the more apparent. It made me want to research other means of storytelling within other cultures, and how I can use specific strategies to convey themes through art in my own creations.
Semester 2 Reflection
This year I really struggled making connections with staff and mentors in class. In high school, I developed long-lasting relationships with teachers by participating frequently in class and making sure to always try my hardest with assignments. This year, I really struggled to do so due to the lack of face-to-face interaction in class and an unfortunate absence of motivation caused by doing school during a pandemic. I wish I could have gotten to know my peers, mentors, and professors more beyond simple pleasantries, and I really hope that next year will provide me a second chance to do so. Hopefully any incoming student will never have to experience their first year of college during a global pandemic like I did, so they can have a better opportunity to make wonderful first impressions.
College Park Scholars was a fantastic starting point to gathering like-minded students in a welcoming environment to make one of the hardest parts of freshman year easier: making friends. The first few weeks of college I tried my best to get out of my comfort zone by attending as many Scholars-sponsored events as possible, even if socializing was made harder by COVID restrictions. Unfortunately, a decline in my mental health due to living isolated in my dorm led me to needing to live at home - making socializing with other Scholars even harder. In the end, I spent my entire freshman year of college at home without making a single friend beyond pleasant introductions. This seems to have been something of my own fault, as others in my exact same position seemed to do just fine. Regardless, I would advise incoming students to make the most of the opportunities they are given, even if I was unable to do the same.
Like I said, the Arts Scholars is a great medium for inspiring community and artistic engagement. When surrounded by other people who love art just as much as you do, it is easy to get inspired to launch personal creative projects of your own. When I learned about other students’ personal projects, I felt happy to have found other people who make art in their own time and even post it on social media. There are also nice Scholars-sponsored events that let students showcase their own work (like Slam Poetry Night), and were I a poet I would have enjoyed showing other people what I can do.
The Arts Scholars program also did a nice job explaining art beyond its material definition. Art has the capacity for inspiring society in ways both good (activism) and bad (propaganda). I really enjoyed the events with guest speakers, especially ones who use their art to make a better impact on their community. College is a birthing place for students to expand their worldview, and the activism portion of Arts Scholars is a great medium to do so. This is especially important to incoming students, as expanding one’s worldview is something that is necessary as one ages from a teenager to an adult.Â
Throughout my first year in the Scholars program, I found that the Workshop portion was most beneficial to me and my personal work. I was in the Wire You Waiting workshop, and I had never done wire sculpting before. It was a unique experience, and one I never would have done without the support of Arts Scholars. In that new experience, I had learned new ways of approaching art, rather than sticking to what I am most comfortable with. Going beyond one’s comfort zone is essential to being an artist, and that is a trait that new students coming to Art Scholars should pick up on if they want to see themselves grow.
Semester 3
Art is a fantastic medium to explore multiple perspectives and challenge one’s own perspective - the perspective that one has grown up with and become accustomed to. For example, when I attended the Rajas performance in late October, I was introduced to new music, singing, and storytelling styles that I was not used to as someone who had grown up in suburban America. This helped me broaden my horizons in terms of other perspectives, and helped me learn about all sorts of music styles unique to South Asian culture. In terms of the methodology associated with the creative process, one should kickstart the process by gathering inspiration, jotting down all notable ideas, and then beginning to refine. I exhibited the creative process when I came up with the idea for my workshop, and the initial steps we took as a class to generate Capstone ideas helped me develop my workshop even further. When starting the feedback process, the most effective ideas to implement are making sure all feedback is constructive, and ensuring that feedback occurs regularly. When receiving feedback on my own projects, I found it most helpful to obtain feedback often so I do not stray too far from the main goals of the project.
The idea of art as a means of expression is certainly a topical idea, especially now that society is emerging from the isolation of pandemic living. Personally, and for many others around me, art was a means of both escapism and expression during the darkest days of the pandemic. In Arts Scholars specifically, I remember last year I participated in a Podcast assignment where we all talked about our own personal connection to the pandemic and how it inspired us to explore new or underdeveloped creative endeavors. This way, I got to share my own story about how I tried something I had never done before: share my art on social media. This new venture was both exciting and scary, and was ultimately one of the most significant ways in which art was a means of both expressing myself and escaping from the stresses and anxieties of lockdown.
One of the most interesting courses I have taken so far as an Arts Scholar has to be TLPL 288W, or, Censorship in Children’s and Young Adults’ Literature. I took this class as an elective this semester, and I am so glad I did. It definitely was the most intellectually stimulating class I’ve taken at UMD so far, as each lecture was filled with interesting dialogue and discussions. This course relates to Arts Scholars in that the concept of censorship is one that can be applied to art, and is honestly one of the biggest talking-points in the world of art and what it means to express oneself.
This course was definitely improved by the community sense of Arts Scholars. When going to class, the friendships and connections formed between the students and faculty were palpable. Though I found it difficult to make friends this semester, I still felt like this class made a much safer and welcoming environment to do so compared to my other classes.
Though my workshop has not officially begun yet, I hope that I will be able to contribute to the Arts Scholars community by teaching my fellow Scholars about character design. In addition to technical skills and tips and tricks, I also hope I will be able to contribute a safe space for my students to have fun, relax, and feel supported.
As mentioned in a previous paragraph, Arts Scholars sponsored events like Rajas have helped me encounter outside perspectives and cultures in a way that I would not have the opportunity to do if I had not taken this course. I find it hard to imagine that I would have nearly as many opportunities to encounter such diverse performances and perspectives, and it is great that Scholars fosters such an inclusive and educational environment for me and other Scholars.
Semester 4
Over the past two years in College Park Arts Scholars, I have demonstrated personal, professional, and artistic growth. I started this program in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic; all of my classes were online, all public spaces were limited and masked, and I rarely left my empty two-person dorm room in Bel Air hall. I had difficulty making friends, connecting with my professors, and gathering any motivation to pay attention in my classes or complete assignments with effort and promptness. Needless to say, I was intimidated coming to class in my second year, after two semesters worth of Zoom and meeting usernames and profiles, rather than people and faces. However, after getting more comfortable and deciding to lead a workshop for my capstone, I am proud to say that I have experienced many new things, gained important life-long skills, and have continued to nourish the skills I brought with me to College Park in Fall of 2020.
Though all parts of Scholars, no matter how small, had a role in fostering this personal development, I would say that my capstone workshop had the greatest impact on my Arts Scholars experience. When I was a member of the Wire You Waiting? Workshop my freshman year, I remember progressing through the workshop all the way to the virtual ArtsFest and feeling a new desire to lead my own workshop, but for the type of art that I have a great passion for: character design and illustration. And though I juggled a few individual capstone ideas in my head for a bit in the beginning of my sophomore year, I ultimately decided to follow my heart and make the jump into being a workshop leader, something that I never have done before. Now that ArtsFest and my workshop have officially concluded, I can proudly say that I am so glad I made that choice. Through the reflective journals and pre-workshop TA and workshop leader colloquiums, I saw myself transform from a nervous, self-deprecating apprentice into a confident and comfortable student leader. I developed skills in leadership, public speaking, problem-solving, and organization in such a hands-on way that I had yet to experience in any other class at UMD, and I am proud of all of the work that I, Katie, and the workshop participants put into each week and the workshop as a whole. I found myself revitalizing passions that had been dimmed by the pandemic, and though I am still far from being 100% comfortable in my identity as a student at UMD, I feel like this semester helped me make great strides in finding myself again and discovering new interests and passions that I had yet to unearth before.
Apart from the capstone, I believe that another enlightening experience I got through Arts Scholars was the La Manplesa field trip. On its own, the documentary was incredibly well-made and very powerful, but this feeling was all the more enhanced with the panel discussion that followed afterwards. Mostly when I see films, read books, and enjoy other media I take them at face-value, only stopping briefly to think critically on specific concepts or ideas that catch my interest. But sometimes, a particularly powerful piece of artwork comes along and prompts me to rethink everything about my reality, and La Manplesa was certainly one of those. Engaging in such real, critical discussion following an already mesmerizing film had me reconsider my role in my community, my current passions and the direction I am walking in life, and my own intrinsic values and moral compass. It made me reflect on what it means to be a member of one’s community, and the ways in which an individual can use their skillset or passions to positively impact their friends, family, and even government policy. In that way, art (song, poetry, and screen printing as seen in the film) have value beyond what our Western capitalist society holds for them, and artists (myself included) can use our passions and skills beyond the scope of money-making and into the realm of community, diversity, identity, and true, societal and political change.
In the future, I imagine I can use what I’ve learned in Arts Scholars in my personal and professional life, as it has already made an impact on myself today. Through the workshop, I gained real-life skills in mentorship, leadership, organization, and many more, which I imagine can be applicable to nearly every professional field, regardless of what I end up going for. These experiences have made me make more concrete decisions of what I value in work and hobbies, specifically in the way that I have a stronger desire to hold true to my artistic passions and make some sort of impact in any aspect of my life. I am grateful to have gained such formative experiences, guidance, and advice through Arts Scholars, and I hope that I can continue to engage with similar communities and organizations in my future.
