20 Time Individual Reflection

Working with Eric on this project has been difficult but very fun. Although Eric and I have known each other for a long time, our strong bond didn't necessarily help us with efficiently completing our final product and working productively. At first, it was hard to find a focus, because we only had a general idea of what we were going to do. When we finally cracked down to narrow our focus, we ended up coming up with tons and tons of different ideas, which was great, but challenging again for us to actually stick to one game plan. Eventually, we picked from our best ideas and combined those goals into one project with one particular mission statement. We will be revealing our thesis statement and our final product at the TED talk. Although this was difficult to get to working, we both knew we wanted to stick with this because of our own passions for the arts. While we might not cover all of the arts and cultures, Eric loves arts, the sketches, the colors, and I love music, the melodies, the arrangements, the rhythms. It's a really large scale that many artists similar to us fall under, and so we can easily use their expertise and experience to the advantage of our project. In the early stages, it was a lot of just researching and digesting and unloading onto our google doc. Information on the correlation between the arts and education and not only academics but wellroundedness in life as well. Then, we got to work as we worked on our passion projects, discovered others' works, held some interviews, and ultimately made huge progress on our final product during and after the spring break. Eric and I learned so much about how music and arts define other students, whether if its their family, their future, or their identity. We feel this is more valuable than all the numbers and "studies" online can bring to the table in terms of encouraging the arts in educational systems, as this information comes from real people with real lives and real emotions, who live currently in contemporary cultures and art forms. I think we actually paced ourselves well in this project. What's next is really up to everyone. I know Eric and I will continue to keep art in our lives, not only as a hobby, but as enrichment to our purposes in life. It's up to the people around us to pursue their own passions, and maybe incorporate what they've been missing as a crucial part of their emotional health and creativity health.