Reflection Essay

           When it was first announced in my WRD 111 class that I was going to have to participate in a group project, my heart sank to the pit of my stomach. I instantly went from feeling hopeful about this class, to wanting to go right to the registration website and drop this class. However, I knew that I had to complete this class, and therefore this project, so I decided to “suck it up” and try to get through it. Later on in the semester when we were actually beginning the group projects, I was even more dejected to find that we were going to be put into groups – I couldn’t even work with people I knew and knew that I could count on.  With that said, going into this project, I had every intention of telling my group to screw off and let me do it myself. However, I was placed in a group of likeminded people, which more-or-less forced us to work together. 

            My biggest struggle throughout this whole project was feeling like I wasn’t doing enough. When picking our topic, we decided that Carlos (one of my group members) probably had one of the most interesting and “workable” topics to choose: The Lonely Boys of Haggin Hall. “The lonely boys of Haggin Hall” as a topic seems now to be a distant memory, because our topic evolved so much from there. We fully intended on focusing on the chronic masturbators inhabiting an all-male dorm here at the University of Kentucky. However, as the project went on, we realized that Haggin is being torn down. The fact that it was being torn down implied that it was old and no longer at its prime, and in these facts we found a gem for our project – the glory days, and lack thereof, for the doomed male residence. The aspect of our project that I am most proud is probably the vintage footage of Haggin field, or the editing of footage into thought bubbles as people are speaking. I believe that both of these contribute to the “then and now” concept of our documentary.

If we had 6 more months to work on this project, more than anything I would want to track down some of the men who used to live in and enjoy Haggin. We had a few different people currently residing there speaking about how terrible it is in its current state, so I wish that we had some old timers to kind of “stick up” for Haggin, since Haggin in its current state cannot defend itself. Also, if we had more time, I would have done more to ensure that our documentary was proofread, and we would have better sound and video quality. The one very important, absolute biggest aspect of our documentary that I would change is spelling and grammar mistakes. I absolutely wanted to bury my head 1000 feet under my desk as each of the many spelling errors popped up on the screen. Also, I would put my name in the credits, as Carlos rushed through editing and forgot me.

For our group, I personally was responsible for the group blog. I was considered the “scriptwriter” and I tried to help Carlos wherever possible. I feel that I promoted a healthy group atmosphere by listening to Carlos (as he sort of took over as our group leader) and clarified when he wasn’t always clear. I also text messaged the group, and tried to contact them from time to time about our project, whether I could make it to meetings, etc. Overall I really enjoyed my group, even though I feel that we could have distributed work more evenly. I wish that I had learned more about editing so that Carlos wouldn’t have had so much on his plate. I feel like my group was satisfied with the effort distribution, and I believe that I contributed all that I could to making sure our project was satisfactory.