Final Reflective Essay

Anthony Portuesi

AMST 422

18MAY2018

Dr. King

Final Reflective Essay

Preserving Places and Making Spaces: A Wild Ride

Throughout this semester I have learned a ton from my peers, my surroundings, my professor, and most importantly; I have learned the most from myself. My writing has improved and gone to lengths that I never knew were possible. I have learned to write with more feeling and depth when needed and how to best carry a message over to readers. I believe it is important for classes like these to exist on campus and throughout the community because it teaches students so much more rather than their usual academic curriculum. Not only is it a break from everyday student-life and the general rigor of my biological science academic courses, it's just fun to be around your peers that you know and are able to grow with. A community was made, and will last with the classmates and the residents that are able to grow and support each other. I also have learned that sometimes the most effective writing pieces are those that are the shortest. The most important lesson I learned from this course and through making the Journey Through Hollins project has been that places are more than brick foundations and general establishment. Places when viewed through the right lens manifest themselves as homes to many people and solidifies its importance to be preserved.

Throughout the semester, I contributed to the class project that took place on Saturday, May 12, 2018. The project was a great success thanks to the work of my fellow classmates and I. I felt the tasks I performed well were writing the research on my assigned place of the Black Cherry Puppet Theater, the profile of William H. Bevans, and coming up with important distinction from my interview with Michael Lamason, the owner of the Black Cherry Puppet Theater to add to the final zine. I feel that the research completed was comprehensive to cover the required assignment while also delving into the specifics of what I personally wanted to learn about the Theater. Parts of the project I thought I could have improved upon were asking team members if they needed help with any of their assigned tasks. I feel that we could have been a little more organized with some of the concepts and the main ideas of the project we wanted to present to the public. As far as the class goes, I feel that I could have improved a little more upon my blog posts by making them more thoughtful by adding pictures and possibly being a little more abstract with my writing style.

Preserving Places, Making Spaces is a project-based course that was extremely new to me. I felt at first that there was not enough structure to the course and the assignments were not clear. I also felt the deadlines could have been communicated a little better. A way that future courses can mitigate this would be to use the blackboard interface and send reminders through email as per usual in the course. Moving the start time of the class from 4 to 4:30 pm would also help some students, myself included to make it on time as some science majors in the course had conflicting times in their schedules of when classes would start and when they would end. However, I thought the course fulfilled my expectations in that the class as a whole got to engage with each other, the community and ourselves. The class had the opportunity to make a large part of our schedule and helped immensely with the creativity of ideas throughout the semester and in the project. The informal atmosphere of the course was also soothing to say the least because it allowed the class to immerse themselves in the right frame-of-reference to contribute to the course and the community.

For the first semester this course has been taught at the Lion Brothers Building, I believe the location worked fantastic. It provided the students with a different atmosphere away from the main campus and allowed student the opportunity to explore the community of Hollins Market that we would do our project on. I think the classroom itself was great and accommodated the students well. However, if the instructor plans to open the course to more students, the amount of space (table-wise) would not work. To fix this problem, UMBC should help the American Studies department in finding more suitable furniture to get the job done. Also, more available outlets to plug in electronic devices would be helpful as well. The roundtable aspect of teaching the course fits well and should not be changed. The location of the building allowed the students to quickly complete the objectives of the project by simply walking outside and visiting the assigned place or talking to residents in the neighborhood.

The final event that took place on Saturday May 12, 2018 was an outstanding success in my opinion where I think everyone in the class could agree. Aspects of the event that worked were the food was in the right place at the right time, and was absolutely delicious. This invited people to stay a little longer, meet the students, explore the building and the project, and learn more about the rich history of Hollins Market and Baltimore as a whole. The part of the project Zach put together with the story map website was phenomenal and really put into perspective the importance of each building and laid the framework of the project for our guests. The zine was magnificent and presented the classes ideas, research, and accomplishments clearly and completely. The walking tour and the open mic were a great success as well. All of the guest felt welcome and wanted to spend more time in the community. I felt the final event could have lasted a little longer as it seemed too short to me at first. If we could have made the event a little more child friendly, that would have possibly brought more guests to the venue as well. The event could have been promoted better through social media and on campus as it is important for the UMBC community to see what a small group of dedicated students coming from extremely different backgrounds have accomplished.

I feel the grade that a student earns is subjective to the amount of time and effort they put into the course. With this being said, I feel that I deserve a grade of A minus. I feel this grade is fair because of the sacrifices I had to make to make for this class.  My other major core course work and the time commitment I had toward Army ROTC suffered a good bit. The Army is going to be my career when I graduate so I feel personally that I did an outstanding job in helping my peers become successful in the classroom by helping in various areas of the project and in developing future leaders of the United States Army as a senior in the Army ROTC program at Johns Hopkins University. The time management skills that I found myself executing were insurmountable to most of my peers at UMBC and in the general college community. I am relieved I was able to touch the life of at least one person during my time at this university. All this while working a part-time job to just have enough money to pay my tuition and bills was difficult, but well worth the wait and hard work. I want to be successful as bad as I want to breathe and doing not only what is required but what is mandatory for success is essential in school and in life and I feel I have attained that.

I can say I regret a lot of poor decisions throughout my time in college, but definitely not the decision to take this class. Once my Army career has started and is well-underway, I definitely have goals and a desire to pursue higher education in a Master's program, possibly political science or government because the community of Hollins Market has had such a profound impact on my well-being, that I would like to further help others and foster growth. I thank everyone for their continued support and I hope I have at least touched one person in this class with my demeanor, my character, and my actions. I also would like to continue this blog practice as I begin my career.  A great quote I like to say to myself everyday is: “Your pain is the breaking of the shell to your understanding.” I truly think it is important to do everything you say you are going to do and live life with a purpose. Thank you for this opportunity to share my thoughts and connect on a deeper level. So this is not goodbye but see ya later. Until next time!

Anthony Salvatore Portuesi