A Reflection on Work of Art
At the start of my freshman year, I walked in with the goal to better not only myself but others as well. I not only wanted to learn and develop my own experiences, I also wanted to help others do the same.
My plan at the start was to help others through feedback and constructive criticism on their work. I wanted to not only tell them what was awkward or wrong, but how they could improve on it as well. In order to do this though, I had to overcome a massive hurdle; I had to get over my anxiety. This is no easy feat as anyone with an anxiety disorder can tell you.
Anxiety isn't like a pet peeve or a little inconvenience. It controls your life, deeming what you can and cannot do. I’d like to say that I found a way to cope with this, (other than medication) but the fact is that I haven't. Though there is still hope as another hurdle I had to jump was my ADHD, this made it difficult to manage time and priorities. It makes it hard to focus on just one thing for extended periods of time, and in today’s capitalist world this makes life extremely difficult for me. Unlike my anxiety however, I did find a way to cope with this.
In order to cope with my impatient nature, I split projects into smaller, more manageable pieces. Instead of just saying that the final due date for something is X I instead split it into smaller segments so X1 was due then X2 and so on and so forth. This process I found to work really well for me and allowed me to easily keep up on my work.
This class was very difficult for me, not only because of the aforementioned anxiety, but the size of given assignments. I said how I dealt with them personally, but that took me a long while to figure out. This meant that in the beginning of the year I was struggling quite a bit to keep up with the amount of work.
One thing I find that often goes unmentioned with projects is that, it often doesn't matter how much time is given, but it's the size of what’s due. For someone like me, if a massive project is due in a couple weeks, instead of using that time to work on the project, I find myself figuring out how to do it for a majority of that time. When not given a framework for how to do something I struggle massively. The strategy of splitting things into smaller pieces can only work to an extent, since you first need to figure out how to split it in a way that makes sense.
The struggles that I often face are seemingly only for certain things however, at least to an extent. When I'm working on something artistic or creative I often find myself more motivated than I would otherwise. It also allows me to more easily split big things into smaller pieces. Perhaps this is because I'm more familiar with the creative processes, or maybe I just enjoy it more. Whatever the case is, it makes it difficult in many ways of life.
With the track I’m going down I not only won’t face this issue as often, but I will also be able to do things I love. I’m currently moving towards getting a BFA which requires basically only art classes. This path means that I won't have to face the issues I struggle with in many other topics.
Looking back on this year, it’s obvious that I have improved drastically. I found myself more motivated than ever in winter term, and in turn I was able to establish techniques and strategies to help me dig out of the holes I often find myself in. Not only combating the urge to dig deeper but also finding a way to gather the strength to dig back up. To improve oneself is not only beneficial to that person, but through communication and reflection, one can use what they have learned to help others as well.