I believe MIDE 300 has completely changed my perspective with a number of habits we looked at. More specifically, I believe as a result of this semester I am embracing child’s eye and creative confidence more. Within most of my classes I used to simply focus on the work that had to get done rather than the possibilities and opportunities to explore different perspectives and topics within it. Now, however, through opening my eyes to looking at assignments and problems to tackle with a child’s eye, I believe it is really helping me. Applying what we learned about being hyper focused not only on my surroundings (which has been a perspective shifter for me as well, especially in quarantine) but also take a look at things / assignments with fresh eyes as an opportunity to learn as much as I can. I also believe this semester in MIDE 300 has made me realize I need to work on my creative confidence — and helped me do this. I consider myself a creative person for sure, but I have always compared myself to others in that and not necessarily had the confidence to embrace it in comparison to other creative people. I also struggle with class participation – which I have always thought is kind of odd because socially I’m a very outgoing friendly person. But in class, I typically lack the confidence to take the initiative and share my perspective and what I have to say. This class has really pushed me to have the confidence to speak up in class. Everyone has a different perspective and I need to be confident in my creative and my perspective. At the beginning of the MIDE 300 class I barely participated voluntarily – but right before spring break I was constantly raising my hand, wanting to share my though process of developing the creative objects we did and learn how that differed from others. I truly believe that MIDE 300 helped me tackle this habit, and I will definitely take these new habits of being confident onto my other classes.
Naturally, I believe I am someone that already embraces ambiguity and this comes naturally to me. I have always been a risk-taker, and I like the feeling of not knowing what’s going to come next or what the direct path should be for the desired outcome. In fact, I prefer not knowing what the outcome is going to be and enjoy the possibility that it could be unexpected. Learning about this in the semester made me realize how this habit comes naturally to me, and further enforces that I should continue to embrace ambiguity and uncertainty because the best results can come when there aren’t necessarily pre-set expectations.
As a whole I believe I really learned a great deal in MIDE 300 and not only am I excited to take what I have learned and the habits I’ve worked through to have a more innovative character to the next MIDE classes, but also I’m excited to apply it to the other aspects of my life — especially with all of the free time in quarantine. I definitely need to continue to work on all of these habits but this semester I believe I’ve grown a lot through everything we learned and focused on.