Blog 8 - The Last Blog
I do not really know where to begin; every blog so far has had a prompt or an article for me to read and reflect upon. I know the questions that Prof. Shanton gave us to not directly relate to my situation, but I will answer the questions and relate them to my experiences in the fall. To start off, the summer program is nothing short of exhausting. Even though I only had two courses to take (the other being Dr. West's Teaching Music in Higher Education course), I got to experience second-hand everyone running to and from class, scrambling to finish assignments, and being on the verge of a mental breakdown multiple times. This program is very stressful; I applaud everyone currently (and previously) enrolled in the summer music program for getting through a five-week gauntlet of academia. For everyone in this class, there are only two more summers to go, and you will have your M.M. in Music Education; hopefully, that is an exciting thought for you! I sincerely wish you the best of luck these next two summers.
It was great to meet music educators from so many different backgrounds. Each individual has their own unique upbringing (education, work experience, etc.), and the stories that followed and were shared made the daunting five-week task much more enjoyable.
In comparison to this past fall, it was very nice to be able to work with a class entirely comprised of music educators. In the fall, there were only two of us; everyone else was either a performance, conducting, or composition major. Much of the class was spent discussing MLA formatting (and rightfully so, considering 90% of the class was required to use it). Being able to strictly focus on APA this summer has been very helpful for me. I feel much more comfortable with the formatting of citations after retaking this course. I also feel much more comfortable navigating the online and print databases on the source lists. In the fall, I was hanging on by a thread trying to understand how to navigate all of the sources (for me, RISM was a nightmare the first time through).
While my issues in the fall class stemmed from procrastination and increasing workloads, I am actually relieved to go through the course again (this time with a better grip on things). The entire situation regarding retaking the course was a wake-up call to me; I quickly realized that I could not continuously put off assignments until the last minute. The fast pace of this summer program kept me consistently on my toes, and I did not allow myself to fall behind on assignments. While this is second nature to some people, it is quite uncommon for me. To have as lazy of an attitude as I did in the fall is unacceptable at the graduate level, and my grade suffered because of it. People refer to the cliché, "learning experience", and while that's a very ambiguous term, it is very appropriate for my experiences in retaking this course. I will not forget the chaos of the Ithaca College School of Music summer grad program, that is for sure!
I plan on documenting this experience in my online processfolio; while we are supposed to describe each class's relevance to "the golden sheet," I would like to mention the importance of how this summer course influenced my mindset and approach to education in general. While I already have a section of Bibliography and Research in Music, these five weeks were a significant portion of my year-and-a-half at Ithaca College so far. It would only seem reasonable to incorporate the differences between my two experiences in this class. I feel much stronger navigating through the sources in the library, and I actually am excited to use some of the information I found for my annotated bibliography.
That's about all I've got. Thanks for the experiences, everyone! I wish you the best of luck in the coming summers. There is time to relax for a hot minute before the school-year begins again, so make the most of it! I will be around next summer, so I might see you all then. Otherwise, best of luck in all of your future endeavors! Until next time... (well, hopefully not for me again. I don't know if I can handle taking the course a third time). Take care!
It was great to meet music educators from so many different backgrounds. Each individual has their own unique upbringing (education, work experience, etc.), and the stories that followed and were shared made the daunting five-week task much more enjoyable.
In comparison to this past fall, it was very nice to be able to work with a class entirely comprised of music educators. In the fall, there were only two of us; everyone else was either a performance, conducting, or composition major. Much of the class was spent discussing MLA formatting (and rightfully so, considering 90% of the class was required to use it). Being able to strictly focus on APA this summer has been very helpful for me. I feel much more comfortable with the formatting of citations after retaking this course. I also feel much more comfortable navigating the online and print databases on the source lists. In the fall, I was hanging on by a thread trying to understand how to navigate all of the sources (for me, RISM was a nightmare the first time through).
While my issues in the fall class stemmed from procrastination and increasing workloads, I am actually relieved to go through the course again (this time with a better grip on things). The entire situation regarding retaking the course was a wake-up call to me; I quickly realized that I could not continuously put off assignments until the last minute. The fast pace of this summer program kept me consistently on my toes, and I did not allow myself to fall behind on assignments. While this is second nature to some people, it is quite uncommon for me. To have as lazy of an attitude as I did in the fall is unacceptable at the graduate level, and my grade suffered because of it. People refer to the cliché, "learning experience", and while that's a very ambiguous term, it is very appropriate for my experiences in retaking this course. I will not forget the chaos of the Ithaca College School of Music summer grad program, that is for sure!
I plan on documenting this experience in my online processfolio; while we are supposed to describe each class's relevance to "the golden sheet," I would like to mention the importance of how this summer course influenced my mindset and approach to education in general. While I already have a section of Bibliography and Research in Music, these five weeks were a significant portion of my year-and-a-half at Ithaca College so far. It would only seem reasonable to incorporate the differences between my two experiences in this class. I feel much stronger navigating through the sources in the library, and I actually am excited to use some of the information I found for my annotated bibliography.
That's about all I've got. Thanks for the experiences, everyone! I wish you the best of luck in the coming summers. There is time to relax for a hot minute before the school-year begins again, so make the most of it! I will be around next summer, so I might see you all then. Otherwise, best of luck in all of your future endeavors! Until next time... (well, hopefully not for me again. I don't know if I can handle taking the course a third time). Take care!
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