I never guessed that I would be doing my first semester of junior year from home, but in the middle of a pandemic, truly anything can happen. Even though I’ve had the heaviest workload of my Furman career this semester, I have seen the most growth in myself, even during the most unprecedented of times.
What did I do?
My major projects for this semester included…
- 4 Blogs Posts
- A Visual Essay on iSUP (inflatable stand-up paddle-boarding)
- Creating a Flyer on Furman University’s Shi Center Student Programs
- Creating a Podcast on the Enneagram with my guest, Emma Kerr
- Live Tweeting the 2020 Virtual Emmy’s
- Creating a PSA on unplugging and getting outside
- Creating an Individual Video on my dad and the best days of his life
- Creating an E-Portfolio, which is what you’re reading this blog on now!
Out of all these projects, my favorites included my visual essay, my flyer, and my podcast. In addition to my Digital Storytelling class, I was taking a graphic design class that really set me up well to create a flyer, a graphic for my podcast, and a visual essay. These were also the topics I had previous interest in when I came into this class, so it was super exciting to grow my skills in those areas!
What did I learn?
Beyond gaining proficient skills in Adobe Creative Cloud, I have learned what it means to be not only a good creator of digital content, but a good consumer of one. In a world full of fake news, it is paramount think critically about the content we are consuming! We have the choice to be passive consumers or active consumers, and it is more important than ever to be active consumers who can tell the difference between good, great, and bad content.
How will I use it in the future?
Stories have always been a big part of my life. I have always been a dreamer, a creator, a go-getter, and a romantic (shoutout to my Enneagram number, 4w3). I’ve always thought I’d be telling stories through my writing and through mentoring, but I never could’ve dreamed that my storytelling could look like this.
As a storyteller, I am never at a loss of ideas. However, following through with my ideas has always been much more difficult than coming up with them. I tend to err on side of perfectionism, but this class has forced me out of that. With only so much time to complete a project, I had to stop perfecting it and just turn it in. I have learned that criticism is not an attack on my personal character, but instead, it is a critical part of being a storyteller. No project will ever be perfect, but it can be complete. While this semester wasn’t perfect, I am delighted to say that not only has it brought immense growth, but it is complete. Now, onto the next chapter!
Ellie Proctor 
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