It’s always a little bitter-sweet, the ending of a semester. You work so hard for a few months and you have an end product that gets a grade, maybe you show it off a little, and that’s it. Boon. Finished. End. Done. Then, afterwards, all your left with is a better understanding of something and a little more insight into the world and how it functions.
So, this COPLAC course… What a ride.
Maybe it was not made clear to me that I needed to design my own website (with my partner, made it a lot easier). Maybe I figured it would be harder than I imagined. Maybe I didn’t have as much internal support as I should have had on the day Professors Wallace and Welch told us we would be making a website. Who knows. But I was horrified. Then it happened. I look back on it now and it was relatively easy. My partner, Shane, was the biggest help. I’d meet with him and he would have figured something else out, and I would say “Wow, that’s pretty awesome. How’d you do that?” He would walk me through it and then we both knew. It was really that easy. Shane wasn’t afraid to try and fail. And when I knew something he didn’t (rarely happened), I’d show him. It was an awesome collaborative process. Then, one day, we had a website. I poked through the final product the day of our presentation and thought “Wow, that’s pretty awesome. How’d we do that?” It was really impressive to me that two kids, one who can’t figure out how to use a slide-rule, could design a website with nice pictures, colors, text, and whatnot. I owe most of it to my partner. His willingness to try and his not being afraid to fail really made the website. A round of applause for Shane.
Then the other students in the class also helped. I would post a problem of mine onto my blog and within a day there were two or three comments on how to fix it. Or nice words of encouragement. Either way, both were necessary. That’s what got me through the class; the students. Part of it was also competitive. Someone has a really nice website, well then lets make our better. And maybe ours wasn’t better but it was comparable. Each team, in my opinion, made my team work harder to do the best we could. But, I also learned a lot from my classmates. I don’t really know what goes on outside of Berkshire County, all I have is the news (ew). So, hearing students present on current events and historical ones about where they’re from opens your eyes a little to the world you live in. They’re not lying to increase their ratings, they aren’t doing it to impose some political agenda on you, they just want people to know the truth. It was nice to read and learn so much about things I had no idea about. Isn’t that why we go to college in the first place? To learn more?
Then there were the professors. You’ll both get a student evaluation so I’ll keep this section short. They made the class. Their timely responses to emails, knowledge of website building, knowledge of conflict resolution, knowledge of presenting things, everything was great. Their energy and excitement at the beginning of each class. It’s what made the class, it’s what made the website building a little easier. Like, I said, this will be short. But thank you both. (P.S. I put 10/1 in one of your reviews, meant 10/10. You know who you are!)
I guess I should wrap this up. (Get it? Like a present cause it’s almost Christmas!) The class was great. I really did learn a lot. I’m surprised how much I enjoyed it, I’m not usually a fan of online courses. But this was awesome. I’m also very proud of everyone in the course with me, everyone did a stellar job and made some awesome websites. Again, thank you Shane for your dedication to the class. And thank you Professors Wallace and Welch!