Final Entry

I think that Civic Engagement was a better, and more fun class than many of my peers gave it credit for. My professor was really organized and engage in the class, making the experience fun and educational. The use of movies and real examples from previous classes helped me connect more to the material, and relate it to my life. I wish more professors would use movies because reading about the issues is one thing, but seeing them on screen with real people and something to connect to really makes a bigger impact. You get to also see the surroundings and immerse yourself into the stories, taking the visuals and sounds with you along with the story. The movies also put the ideas into a context in ways that books have a difficult time achieving while being more involved.

I thought the book was good for the first chapter or two but then proceeded to repeat itself for the next 10 chapters. It carries a great message and meaning with it but it goes nowhere with it which drives it to the ground to the point that I debated if I to continue to read the book or not. I think that the idea of self confidence, and continuing onwards though the way is not clear is something we can apply to many parts of our life but after a few chapters, I got the message and was ready for something new besides becoming willingly distracted by my cats.



I think that the one thing that could have improved my experience in this class was more class discussion. I think that this could have helped make the reading more applicable to our lives and situations, as well as explored new ideas behind the lessons. I think that by involving the class more, it could have helped us share our lives and stories with each other, like the point of the book, but more memorable, and personal because we would be putting a face and personality with the story. I think we could have gone into more modern applications of the books ideas through discussion so we would be learning from past people, present people, and then applying it to the contemporary setting through our projects.

The class project I think is a great idea because it give students an opportunity to become engaged in something they have watched and talked about but never gotten involved in. I think, however, that this should be separate from the service learning hours because in most of my classes and experiences, these are mostly service and little learning. This class, in conjunction with my music capstone class, gave me the opportunity to start a community horn choir which I had been wanting to do for the two years I have been in Florida but never had the time for. This gave me the opportunity to begin one of my dreams and share music with the community through something I am the most familiar with.

I think that this class can help my generation become more involved in the world, as this video we saw in class puts it.