Reflection

Mercy Dankyi-Amoah
History of photojournalism
 Reflection

When I initially took this class I thought it was going to be an easy class, but I quickly came to realize it was going to be that easy and without a doubt this is by far the hardest class that I have taken, I found myself I struggled with the simplest of tasks often taking a considerably longer time to complete a task than the other students. I realized I was struggling when I missed my first assignment, and also trying to split my time between class and family it was very difficult for me. During this course, I struggled with this class not because I couldn't understand it but because I did not think it was going to be this involved. I think this course is for more of a person who is going into journalism, photography or any of the field that has to do with this course. I am used to reading books then do my research to back up what I have read, that was where my struggle was. There were many challenges that I faced with this class one was not being able to access the school library to be able to do my research and so I had to rely on my own way of research, I also didn't have the latest software on my computer so must of the time I was having issues with my computer which resulted in me completing most of my assignments at work the submitting it. I was not consistent with my work. Balancing a job and college coursework and a family is certainly challenging also.
Before this class I knew nothing about photojournalism what they have to go through on a daily basis to get the images and stories that we see and read about, I also learned the types of cameras and how far camera have come, I learned who invented the first camera and how it was used to take pictures.

 I feel like nothing went well with this class because the moment I feel to understand the first assignment and I was made aware that I was falling the course then I started to panic so I did not take time to look at my work or read it through I just wanted to do it and hand it in so I get a grade for it even if my work it wasn't quality and I also did not want to fail this class. I knew I should have withdrawn from the class but I continued through because I thought I would improve. I think my moment of satisfaction was when I was able to complete an assignment and hand it in and get credit for it and also get the comments from my teacher on what I did right and what I did wrong. I feel that doing my research I try my best while researching given the resources that I have , but the problem is, I don't have the time to look through all that information do to the fact that I had to read other course materials as well so it didn't give me the opportunity to roughly look through my research. It was very hard for me to focus on my research that can have such vast topics. And I feel this is the main problem for me.
 As far as blogging before this class I did not know what blogging is I had to do research on the web to find out what it was, I also had to ask people at work with the teenager to know what it. Although I understand how to now blog I think that I am able to use this in my future class, but it will not be part of what I will do on daily bases. Trying to understand what blogging is took me a while during this course moving forward I would not have any trouble should I take a course that requires the use of blogging, I think this semester was a bit of challenge for me because I also had another instructor say as part of the class we had to create a twitter account and I had no idea on how to do that as well, it is not that I don't know how to do the assignment I just don't see the relevance of these sites and what it has to do with school.
 I realize a lot of the time I did not give credit to the site where I got my information from and now sitting back and reflecting now I know why it is most important to always give the proper credit, there's almost never a good reason not to properly credit the artist. Now looking back it feel as if I cheated them on their hard work by just taking the information and not giving them the credit that is due it wasn't intentional it was just me not paying attention.
 overall I have learned a lot from taking this class, whether is blogging or photojournalist who risk their lives everyday to get us the news or images across the globe or the types of cameras that has been used over the decade this class was very interesting even if I did not pass it I would take it again without adding any other class to it and just focus on just this class. I feel that if I had manged my time  work and family properly and spend more time doing my home work I would have gain more knowledge from this class.