Senior Project Reflection

PART I: Two-Hour Presentation

(1) Two-Hour Presentation Student Assessment

I think I deserve a P+ for my two-hour because I followed the guidelines of the contract and turned in the lesson plans on time. I knew my content and gave many examples so the students watching my presentation would understand what I was explaining clearly. According to a few of the juniors who watched my presentation they told me I deserved an AE because I made complicated subjects understandable, but I feel like I deserve at least a P+. 

(2) What are you most proud of in your 2 hour presentation and why?

I am most proud of my activities a lot of planning went into them. I made sure they required the students to use everything I had taught them previously. The activities were successful and checked for the students’ understanding. If someone didn’t understand something during the activity I would address it and give them an example that would help them understand what was being taught before moving on to my next answer.

PART II: Overall Senior Project Experience

(3) What do you think you did well on in the project? What could you have done better? Please explain.

In the whole senior project, I felt like I did a great job on my research. A lot of books or articles out there about editing are mostly tutorials so I was very limited on the books I could use. Despite that I would spend a lot of my time looking for books in libraries, online, in stores about video editing that way I had a sufficient amount of research sources. Finding professionals in the field to interview was hard but I think I did extremely well finding them. It took me half of the year to finally get an interview with Nina Gilberti, the editor at Criminal Minds, but I did end up getting it. I was persistent and didn’t give up. Editors are hard to come across so I think I did exceptionally great finding interviewees. I think I could have found another service learning mentor besides Mr. Duarte. Don’t get me wrong I enjoyed helping him teach his class and being able to show his students everything I had learned through my senior topic, but I still think maybe shadowing someone in the actual field would have helped. Like I previously stated, editors are busy people and most of them for interviews would cancel on me last minute or never contact me back but I personally think I should have started looking for service learning during the summer. So I could have been much more prepared.

1. What is your EQ and what is the best answer to your EQ?

What is most important for an editor to have to effectively assemble a video sequence?

My best answer is being able to create the effect of storytelling based on shots because if you know who the scene should revolve around you are able to cut the scene to focus on said person. Each shot is chosen to enhance what a character is saying or doing so to be able to choose the correct shot an editor needs to know what the scene is about and what is really going on underneath. This gives the scene and the characters depth. 

(5) How has the last month of culminating events (e.g I-Search, Two-Hour, Exit etc) affected your answer to your EQ? Has it changed? Why or why not?

Well, in that past month my essential question changed from, “What is the most important skill to hone when preparing for a career as a broadcast news editor?” to “What is most important for an editor to have to effectively assemble a video sequence?” It was the Three Column chart that prompted the change. Originally my first EQ was more focused on the career aspect of editing rather than the art itself. I feel like my new EQ helped me focus my three answers much more and better suited my overall project. 

(6) What suggestions do you have in order to improve the senior project?

The project itself is fine, the only thing I have to say is in the last two months things were out of control deadlines were piling up and raising my stress levels. The week of prom we originally had three deadlines so I was stressed out of my mind. Also for model assembly the teachers could be much more clear up front on how many sources are needed. I remember my house found out the week before that we had to have specific sources and were under a lot of tension. 

(7) Overall Senior Project Assessment 

Overall, I feel like I deserve an AE because really did put a lot of effort into this project. Service learning took over my life Mondays through Fridays and my weekends were dedicated to finding books or sources that could help me answer my EQ. I put a lot of effort into every single component and completed them to the best of my abilities. All the information I acquired through out the year I made sure to incorporate it into my 2 hour to give my presentation depth. I turned in all my components, put a lot of effort into completing them, and I was able to multitask with everything I had going on this year, so I do believe I deserve an AE.