This semester has been a wild one. Starting my third year in college has started off at a fast pace, as I attempted to balance a full course load, a job, a social life, and (not enough) visits to the gym. In retrospect, though, I am so glad that I took the Advanced CUPID Studio course. Amidst all the crazy academic presentations and projects, I was given the opportunity to work on jobs that have a real-life impact. Through developing blog posts, a conference program, and a multimedia presentation for senior English majors, here’s what I learned:
–Having no official deadlines can be hard. As a procrastinator by nature, I’m used to overwhelming myself with work the day before it’s due. But when I was given suggestions on when to turn in my work, I struggled. This taught me an important lesson about time-management. In my future job, my assignments may not have deadlines, but they still have to get done. Planning and working ahead is everything.
–It’s an entirely different experience writing in a non-academic setting. I found myself not working to meet a rubric’s requirement, but instead working to analyze my audience. For the case of the conference schedule, I had to ask myself how I could organize the given information so that my target audience would understand it. It brought about a different way of looking at a situation, and it was pretty refreshing to write for someone other than a professor.
–A lot of work goes into researching a rhetorical situation. OK, I already knew this in theory from the majority of my Professional Writing and Rhetoric classes: you have to know your message, your purpose, your audience, etc. But I found in this course that I was having to look intricately at all parts of good old Aristotle’s triangle before I had an idea of how to direct my projects. This was particularly important for the blog posts, as I connected most of my topics to rhetoric. I found the experience to be eye-opening and helpful in building up my ever-expanding identity as a PWR major.
To all Elon students reading this post, I cannot emphasize the importance of taking a course like CUPID studio that differs from the typical grading experience. Too often, we get stuck in the process of working for a grade and forget about taking pride in the quality of our work. I leave this class feeling more prepared for a real job and the real world.
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