Last term at college I'll admit I was quite terrible at keeping track of my reflective learning journal, possibly because I felt writing a reflective learning journal wasn't enforced upon us very much during the past few modules. However, it has been quite strange that I haven't recorded much from the last few months, because I remember on my BTEC Interactive Media course I often kept a journal of thoughts and feelings about college, and back then I didn't even have to! It did make me cope better and to record and remember my thoughts at the the time, which is also important for ideas.
College in general has been going rather well, with very little stress. The quality of my work has seemed to have improved greatly, possibly because I may feel more content with other areas of my life. We have been sharing classes with some of the Foundation Degree Photography students this year, but not so much the art students. I feel this has been good for me to get to know the Photography students better because despite them being in some of our lessons last year, I didn't really get to talk to them much, possibly because it was such a big group. However, I do get on very well with all the Photography students now. They are very chatty, so they can be distracted from their work at times, but are always very friendly and have a brilliant sense of humour, so I get to have a laugh with them. I was even able to help them with their written work just before Christmas, because I managed to complete my written work in a very high quality quite early, and they seemed to really appreciate my help.
Compared to last year there has also been a lot more creative freedom with our practical work, which I have always preferred because it makes my projects more personal and I will also know a bit about the projects before I start them, which is always a positive advantage. Last term I completed two short practical projects, one was designing a football playing dragon character, which was inspired by my dad's voluntary work with a Special Needs Football Team and their mascot is a dragon. This idea was very much approved by Neil because it was inspired by something in the real world. My other project was just really to expand my portfolio of work and what I could do in Maya. Because I hadn't modelled vehicles before in Maya, I decided I wanted to design a futuristic time machine kart in Maya. However, because I was very much looking forward to Christmas, this quickly changed into a sleigh with horizontal wheels, so it could hover. I then rendered this image to use on a Christmas card. I enjoyed both of these short projects, but while I was working on these projects at college, it was very quiet, because of everybody on the course, only myself and Ananda remain, and Neil runs the lessons and lectures and Lynda supports me, so motivation at times could be difficult. There was one other person on the Foundation Degree in the first year, my good friend Jake, but he was quickly removed from the course because he hadn't enrolled properly. This was a shame, because I really enjoy his company and get on with him very well, and it would have been another person to talk to.
I've also started using Pinterest properly, which has helped me greatly to record images and interesting pictures that I can use for my research, and it also records the original source of the image too, great for Harvard referencing!
Something else that is definitely worth mentioning is that I have started my voluntary work placement at a local Special School, to explore a potential career path and learning to become an Art Therapist. I feel that because of my Autism, I have a lot of experience for me to relate to people's problems, and to help them using artistic methods. This has been going really well, and I have managed to come up with some very good ideas for the art therapy sessions that I organise, such as drawing monsters based on people's difficulties, such as anger and anxiety, and drawing heroes and opponents to overcome these difficulties. I also get on very well with the staff there, and have welcomed me very warmly to the placement.
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