At the beginning of this project, my group and I had absolutely no idea what we were doing. Still, we followed the directions and just tried to find places where music was on campus and document them. We had absolutely no idea why for quite a while. However, I knew that I wanted to include the Anime Club we have on campus into our project.
I always loved anime and I always knew that anime had a lot of things to offer. Thankfully, this was one of those times that I could include anime into my education. The sing-a-longs really did make me realize how much I could use anime for this specific project.
Finally, my group and I we're starting to get a basic understanding of what we were supposed to do. I jotted some notes of a rough outline of what our group would be doing in my daybook before we three went our separate ways to get our individual work done. I was thankfully able to get mine done the next day with the interview of a representative of the Anime Club on campus.
Now I had to figure out how to use technology I've never used before and make the interview of better quality. I got it figured out, saved, and ready to share with the rest of my group. In between this, I started to try and think of a reflection for my part. I realized some important key points:
1) Anime is not only a style for art and for entertainment, it is also a place where imagination can run rampant. There are so many ideas that one can observe from the anime they watch and there are so many ideas one can come up with because of this. Writers are able to get new material inspired by anime and can let it grow by watching more anime. It's the new jungle for writing, music, and art. It's a creative thinker's wet dream.
2) Anime is a place where people can share their thoughts and come together. There is a sense of community one gets with anime. In fact, this sense of community is so strong that conventions have come to be - like Animazement - and people can say with pride that they were in the Anime club. They can even say that they're an anime fan. A small group of people, from all over the world, can immediately bond with each other by only knowing that the other person is also an anime fan. They need no more information to be friendly with a complete stranger.
3) Anime is always a place where one can escape the real world and relax. Every single time my friends and I have gone to Anime Club, during high school and now currently during college, we end up using the time as a stress reliever. We have fun, laugh, dance even, sing, and goof off with others in the club by watching anime, singing the openings/closings, or sharing inside jokes. It's a place where even adults can act like a child no matter how mature they have to be outside the club. In a sense, it also keeps us from screaming our heads off from frustration. We calm after these few hours and feel as if we can take on the world over and over again.
I now understand, once again, why I love Anime so much and how just the sing-a-longs during the club meetings can mean so much to me as well as to others. Yet, back to the process of my group and I getting to our final draft in a sense of this project. We hit a road block. My interview wouldn't go to any other file and we spent an entire class period just trying to figure that out. Heart attack, indeed. Anyways, we finally got it working and I sent all I had for my part of the video to the others. Now I can breathe with a sigh of relief - my part is done!
I had a difficult time with this project. When my group and I tried to get together, someone, including me, were at some part in our individual work but we couldn't really share much until we were ready to share it. We were literally down to the wire with this one. Also, none of us had any idea on what the ethnography project was about until a few days before it was due. Thankfully, we all understood by the time we had to get it finished.
I found this project different and hard because it was in a group, which I always have a difficult time with, and because it was something I've never really done before. I was out of my comfort zone and I did not like it. At all. Guess that's a pattern that I'll have to get used to for the rest of my life. Still, we got our project done and now that stress is over, I just want to go back to my club and relax with my friends.
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