A New Perspective

This communications class was not for an elective and it was not for my major. I simply took the class to see what communications was like and to discover whether communications would be something I might want to look into for as a future major. The class was not exactly as I had expected. For the first several months of school, I went to class diligently, but I admit that after missing a few classes due to lack of sleep, I discovered that it didn’t have any negative consequences. The power points were outlines of notes in the textbook, and I found that I could easily learn from the textbook as I could from going to class. I tried to compensate by trying extremely hard on all the assignments and keeping up with the class. However, I do regret missing class however, because I feel that I have not really learned how to improve my communication skills. I have not improved my speech writing or my public speaking skills. I realize that the textbook is important, but going to class is equally important. Regardless, I did make an effort to go to class and hear the other people’s presentations and speeches. There were several people in the class, whom I felt were very good speakers and I wanted to learn to emulate them.

My critique of the class is that it was not all that it could have been. It was really difficult paying attention in class since it was at 8 a.m. and most college students do not get more than 5 hours of sleep a day. Also, I felt that the class syllabus was based off the textbook, and the power point notes were taken directly from the textbook. However, I could see that you were very enthusiastic about communications and I liked your energy and vibrancy when speaking. The highlight of the class was coming in to hear the guest speakers talk. My guest speaker was Ernesto Gluecksmann and he gave us a lot of useful advice about the real-world. It scared and excited me to hear about life outside of college, but it also gave the class a real-world feel to it. One major problem however, was that I felt I did not get that much feedback. I really liked how you had a class YouTube channel and it was amusing to see how I was during the presentations. However, I felt that feedback was somewhat slow and not constructive enough as I got my rubric back with a few sketched notes in the margins. I understand that this is difficult to do, but I just wanted to point that out. However, just giving speeches in class were really helpful since I don’t exactly get to practice that enough. I had a love-hate relationship with the class blog though. It was really inconvenient to use a blog because sometimes your announcements would be drowned out with massive blogging from the other students. However, I felt that the facebook was really effective. I loved that it was so easy to get responses from other students quickly and it made us a more unified class.

Overall, the class could have been better, but I felt that you were a good teacher who was enthusiastic about her field and tried hard to engage your students and educate them why communication is so important. I could not ask more from you. Thank you for everything, Andi.