JENNA DIETRICH
Arts Scholar
SEMESTER 1
With the everchanging nature of the pandemic, I appreciate the university’s attempt to transition back to normal without endangering the health of students. While making the decision to live on-campus or stay at home, I decided to save myself some money on the assumption that the college would close within a week, a month at most. However, I applaud the university’s response to the pandemic, especially the fact the college did not have to send every student home at any point in the semester. While this semester was fairly positive, I expect that next semester may not go as smoothly, and the university must conduct many, many more tests in comparison to the very minute amount of tests conducted this semester. Hopefully, with more testing and less student interaction, the university is able to hold more classes in-person, because online college from the desk in my room was definitely not what I expected college would be like at all. Throughout the entirety of high school, we were always told that college is such a great experience, both intellectually and socially, but unfortunately, we have been unable to live those physical experiences. However, Arts Scholars was a fun way to meet new people and participate in low-stress, creativity-inducing arts activities that provided new perspectives.
Learning online is presumably much different than an on-campus, in-person experience, but my university courses very much fit my expectations for the most part. The course load was a lot to get used to at first, but I feel better adapted to handle the work going forward. Also, grading varied from class to class much more than high school, but I think that was mostly due to how different classes handled their online course. However, I underestimated the overall structure and delivery of most of my courses. With virtual learning, many of my classes were made up of asynchronous lectures, modules, video presentations, and assignments. Although I expect this to change as we transition back to in-person learning, I enjoyed the asynchronous schedule, as it gave me more freedom in determining my schedule and completing assignments at my own pace. Aside from the on-campus “college experience,” I would say that I had accurate anticipations for my university courses. One course in particular, the university wind ensemble, was definitely much different than I expected. There were few opportunities to make music together due to the lack of sophisticated technology that could handle many students playing instruments at one time, especially considering internet lag time and microphone quality. However, my professor handled this class very much like our Arts Scholars colloquium. We had many different guest speakers share their arts expertise with us, as well as some opportunities to participate in creative art-making experiences. Aside from the course itself, I was able to participate in extensions for each of these courses by making a video for different projects, which allowed me to gain insight on film-making as an art form.
Because “Arts Scholars” is obviously a very broad course description, I didn’t expect to cover as many art forms as we did. From in-class activities like bucket drumming, zentangles, and podcast making to pentathlon events such as watching musicals and documentaries, making origami, and playing Among Us, I feel well-versed in many more categories of art that I would have ever thought was possible in one semester. The most impactful assignment this semester in Arts Scholars was the “Look Fair,” because I was given the opportunity to learn about the interests of my peers and hear from others with passions. I loved getting to read the reasoning behind everyone’s art choices, and the enthusiasm that each student had discussing their art gave me new perspectives and encouraged me to look further into those topics or art forms. As I progress through life, I will ask for and listen to the opinions of others to learn about their passions and implement new content in my own life, as well as gain new understanding of the people around me and how they are impacting the world.
It was difficult to build relationships in a virtual environment, especially during workshops when faculty members were not in a big leadership role. However, to continue making connections with faculty members, I reached out through email with questions, talked to faculty members with an older student to help facilitate conversation, attended virtual events such as the Arts Scholars welcome panel for incoming students, and going through the process of becoming a peer mentor so that I could continue fostering close relationships with faculty members for the next year in addition to helping new students adjust. For new students pursuing these relationships, I would recommend that they take time to attend events that faculty members are hosting, attend open office hours to learn about the program and the specialties of the directors, and take any opportunities to work with faculty.
After participating in Arts Scholars, I was impressed with the variety of skills that my peers had in diverse arts categories. Because of this, I was able to connect with students who shared interest in one or two of the same arts forms, and then learn from each other and expand our own arts knowledge through conversation and collaboration. These relationships made it easier to cope with the hard adjustment to college because I had people that I was able to talk to about confusing schoolwork or other challenges of adjusting to college, especially in the middle of a pandemic. We were there for each other, reminding each other of when we had classes or when assignments were due, and supported each other throughout the year. While I expect that opportunities to foster these types of relationships are more abundant in a normal year through in-person events, activities, colloquium, and field trips, I still greatly value my chance to connect with students, in and out of the Scholars program, using art. Next year’s freshmen should use Arts Scholars as an opportunity to meet new people and collaborate with each other using their unique artistic talents and interests.
The Arts Scholars program fosters community and artistic engagement through student discovery in the presence of others. Although our time completing school from home this year has been quite lonely, we can still use art to connect with each other. From participating in Arts Scholars events together, reading each other’s pentathlon event reflections, or simple conversations and discussions during colloquium and workshops, I loved getting to hear the ideas and perspectives of my peers, prompting me to consider my peers’ points of view and expand my knowledge and interests. In the future, I intend to continue contributing to the Arts Scholars community by hosting pentathlon events in a variety of arts forms, causing me to expand my knowledge and connect with my peers; asking my peers to their experiences and opinions to gain a broader understanding of their identities and the importance of art to them; and designing my own workshop for my sophomore spring semester to help students connect with art in a new and meaningful way.
My appreciation of art has expanded through participating in events, workshop activities, field trips, colloquium discussions, and informal conversations with my peers. I value the artwork of my peers more because now that I have attempted these arts forms, I truly see how much talent it requires to produce such a high-quality product. I also appreciate their work on a deeper level because I am given the opportunity to hear their perspectives and creative inspirations for creating their artwork. Future Arts Scholars should listen attentively to their peers and analyze outside artworks to learn to understand the hidden meanings of artwork, and apply art to their personal lives.
Workshops were the most beneficial in supporting my progress as an Arts Scholar. I enjoyed getting to take a class where another student was in charge; this made the workshop feel like a more democratic environment and all students, including myself, seemed to be more comfortable sharing their experiences and discussing art in a smaller group setting. Additionally, my workshop leader ran our workshop in an extremely effective way, encouraging me to create my own workshop next year. Overall, I enjoyed taking a class that was outside of my typical interests and comfort zone; I learned to look from different perspectives through listening to my peers, and the meaning of poetry in society. I also enjoyed that pentathlon events exposed me to many new arts forms, and gave me the opportunity to meet new people through events hosted by Arts Scholars. Incoming students can get the most out of experience by working with others. Learning from my peers was the most valuable part of my experience in Arts Scholars; hearing my peers’ opinions and perspectives, understanding why and how they create art, and listening to what art means to them deepened my own understanding of art.
SEMESTER 2
SEMESTER 3
Art definitely has the power to give us new ideas and perspectives both passively and actively. Many people, regardless of their previous arts knowledge or experience, can appreciate the natural and obvious beauty of art when they see it, and get a general understanding of the artist's intent, which makes art so meaningful in life. However, I appreciate being in the arts scholars program, because it gives me the opportunity to analyze the art beyond its surface level. By communicating with my peers and learning from directors or TA’s, I have had the chance to hear a wide variety of opinions, beliefs, and perspectives that more often than not change my previously held thoughts about the piece of art. For example, after viewing “La Manplesa,” the discussion that followed, both online and in person, provided new perspectives and history that I had not known before, and learning about these events through art made it so much more meaningful to me personally.
At the very beginning of the course, we discussed one model for initiating the creative process, which involved four steps: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. As we began planning our capstone projects, it was personally very helpful to consider these steps to foster creativity. We first began with the preparation step by completing the “capstone ideation” assignment, which involved us writing about all the different ideas that we had for our project. Then, we let the ideas incubate and illuminate as we moved through the rest of the capstone projects, getting periodic feedback from peers, TA’s, and directors. By the end of the semester, we completed the final proposal, which achieved the verification step of the creative process. By using this model for the creative process, we were able to take the project step-by-step, and create the best project possible.
As we developed our capstone projects, we very frequently engaged with many forms of feedback, from group feedback to individual peer feedback to feedback from TA’s and directors. After receiving these constructive comments, I was better able to refine my project to make sure that every aspect fit my intentions for the overall workshop. One of the best opportunities for feedback was through the workshop preview; not only was I able to plan and prepare a lesson to get practice with efficient presentation skills and an authentic class, but the students also provided a new perspective and helpful feedback to help me create the most effective workshop.
As a music education major, I often explore new pieces of music for wind ensembles. More recently, composers have used writing music as an outlet for talking about struggles, especially in regards to the pandemic and the social justice issues that our country faces. My engagement in the arts program has definitely helped me understand these compositions better, as it allows me to analyze the deeper meaning of the pieces, and consider the composer’s intent when listening to and looking at the musical techniques used.
I feel like being an arts scholar has furthered my understanding and appreciation for music and art in general. I feel a deeper connection to the art that I view, and I feel that I am able to have more meaningful conversations with my peers as a result of the skills that I learned in scholars. I am also taking a scriptwriting course this semester as an arts supporting course, and I have definitely seen very similar aspects in teaching and communicating in both classes. For example, one of the main aspects of the scriptwriting course is peer feedback and having meaningful discussions about the plays that we read, which are both heavily prevalent themes seen in colloquiums and the arts scholars program in general.
One of my regrets is not living in Bel Air hall, because I notice that during colloquium, the students that have closer relationships and are more involved in the program live in close vicinity to each other. While my current living situation is more convenient for my major, I would have loved to live with other arts scholars to improve my learning among my fellow arts scholars. Despite this decision, I still feel that I was able to connect with some of my arts scholars peers through the peer mentor program, and through the workshop groups that we participated in, especially since both of those are smaller groups of students. Both of these experiences improved my learning experience in the classroom and outside of class, and I definitely felt more connected to the deeper intention of the scholars program when conversing with my peers in an academic setting and in general.
One of the main ways that I believe I contributed to the scholars community was through being a peer mentor, and the peer mentor captain for the arts program. Specifically as the peer mentor captain, I felt more connected to the entire scholars community as well, since we have bi-weekly meetings with all of the other scholars programs. It is always exciting to discuss how our program is going, what activities we have planned, and how students are reacting to the program in general, especially because it helps me as a peer mentor and captain by providing new ideas for the arts program to use in the future. In regards to the arts program specifically, I feel more connected to the younger students, my peers, and the directors as a peer mentor, which is a really valuable experience for me in terms of building a community of like-minded people who are as dedicated to the arts as I am.
More so than challenging my previous beliefs, being in scholars provided me with new perspectives and opinions that I would not have considered before. For example, when we shared our warm-up answers with each other or during feedback sessions, my peers provided me with new thoughts and ideas that I had not yet contemplated. Learning about opinions and perspectives that are different from our previously held beliefs helps us grow as people; when we consider the strengths and challenges of ourselves and our peers, we can better understand and communicate with each other in respectful and effective ways to enhance our learning community.
Looking back on the past two years, I can truly say that being a member of the Arts Scholars program has helped me improve academically and artistically. In the program, we have been challenged to think critically and defend our artistic opinions, analyze our own art and connect it to our lives outside of scholars, design and execute large-scale projects, and simply experience meaningful conversations with other students. After participating in a wide array of events, I definitely feel like my understanding of what is considered art has expanded. Previous to being in Arts Scholars, my perception of art was very much limited to my hobbies and interests. However, after getting to experience field trips, colloquium classes, guest artists, pentathlon events, and even ArtsFest, I have been able to see just how expansive art can be. From creating podcasts and analyzing films, to building physical structures and sculptures of trash, to observing commentary on the social climate in the world through interpretive dance presentations, there are so many forms of art that people interact and connect with. I also think that my perception of art has been influenced and redefined throughout participation in this program. When I entered, I had a very basic understanding of art, and because I did not understand most unfamiliar art forms very well, they often lacked value to me. However, after learning more about the process of creating, analyzing, and curating art, I definitely have a stronger appreciation for all art forms, even if they are unfamiliar.
Completing my capstone project was a culmination of all of the experiences that I have had in the scholars program. First and foremost, getting to participate in a workshop during the spring semester of my freshman year gave me a great idea of what to expect from leading a workshop. The education provided in our practicum courses as well as the support and feedback from the Arts Scholars directors gave me more knowledge and resources to produce my workshop, such as active learning activities, case studies about classroom engagement, and curating art exhibits. I also know that my arts supporting courses provided a great foundation for this workshop in particular. One supporting course was in scriptwriting and the others were in music, which both contributed to expanding my knowledge and background in these fields in order to successfully produce a music in film workshop. Overall, creating this capstone workshop was an incredible opportunity to expand my knowledge and experience while also sharing my love for music and film scores with everyone.
I have definitely deepened my existing artistic talents and interests through participation in Arts Scholars. For one, each opportunity to complete an independent pentathlon event usually gave me an opportunity to further my previous artistic skills, such as painting or embroidery, or even playing music in a concert or other context. Not only did I get a chance to practice these skills in a new way, but I also had to reflect on the experience, which gave me a more clear idea of why the project was important to me personally and academically, and why the art form is meaningful in general. For the other pentathlon events, field trips, and even workshops, I definitely took risks to expand my creative abilities and interests, which also deepened my appreciation for more art forms and gave me more ways to practice art. One very clear example of how Arts Scholars has impacted my interest in creating art either familiar or unfamiliar to me was my experience with ArtsFest; walking around to each exhibit, I was so intrigued and impressed by every single creation, and it definitely encouraged me to replicate some of those art projects beyond my participation in the Arts Scholars program.
Looking back on all of my experiences in Arts Scholars, I have had so many meaningful opportunities to collaborate with my peers holding diverse artistic perspectives, interests, and abilities. From all the way back in the fall semester of freshman year when we created podcasts in our groups about climate issues, to sharing our poetry in my freshman workshop class, to collaborating with my peers for feedback on my capstone ideas this past fall semester, to working with other workshop leaders, TA’s, and students throughout this semester while teaching my own workshop, to finally encouraging and congratulating all of my peers on their capstone projects at ArtsFest, I have had so many incredible opportunities to learn about my peers and their diverse backgrounds. Overall, I definitely see Arts Scholars informing my future based on the meaningful experiences I have had. As a future educator, I expect to draw upon my knowledge resulting from teaching a workshop, as well as generally learning the importance of art in everyday life. I am so grateful for my experiences in Arts Scholars, and I will definitely carry this program with me throughout the rest of my life.
SEMESTER 4
