As part of a class we were asked to watch John Berger videos titled “Ways of Seeing.”  Although I had been required to read the book for another class the videos we were required to watch in this class brought to my attention points I did not see when reading the book.  One specific area of the videos hit close to home for me and that is the area in the videos that discuss how women are portrayed and how they view themselves.  In the video Berger asked three women how to watch parts of his show and then comment on whether professional paintings of women made any impressions on how they view themselves.  The women discussed in some length, both sides of a argument. I then began to relate that conversation to myself and the advertisements that are directed to women me. 

Growing up and living to this point in my life, I refused to believe that advertisers had the ability to impact how I viewed myself because I knew what they were trying to do.  They were trying to sell me something and I knew that their depiction of perfect women was not accurate.  Photoshop is a powerful tool to create ideal women.   Having worked on a project last semester that tried to connect how advertisers depict rape and sexual assault as beautiful and powerful for men, I decided to take a look at my own self-esteem issues and objectively try to see if advertisers had indeed impacted how I saw myself.   After having this time for self reflection, I now believe that in some way the issues I have with my self-confidence has been impacted by a lifetime of being shown what beautiful is suppose to look like.  
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When creating this video response I wanted to connect as many of my opinions back to the video series created by John Berger in a creative way.  The first way the video relates back to the series is the title for my video.  The video is titled “Ways of Seeing Me.”  The reason I titled the video the way I did was because this video focuses on seeing myself from both the inside and from the outside. Berger’s video made me look back at myself and I felt like this was the focus I really wanted to look at when this video response. With that being said I focused on using a video of my face, specifically the eyes for the imagery for the video.  Listening to the audio and not seeing my mouth move it can feel as though you are more listening to my thoughts and feel less like I am speaking directly to you or to a audience. The word “seeing” implies looking with your eyes, which was another reason for focusing so heavily on this part of the face.  The eyes are the windows to the soul and can tell you more than words can at times.  I also focused on such a tight frame around the eyes for the purpose of not identifying myself as one type of woman. I did this because I did not feel my looks should define who I am and what I believe about myself. In a way John Berger’s video helped me realize that I needed to take firm hold on my own potential and stop comparing myself to every woman I see both in advertisements and in life.  I am different. I am who I am. I can only be me. 

This was the first semester I received teacher reviews.  I was and am still very excited about this.  The reason being is because I received such glowing reviews.  Below are just a few of the reviews that I received. I am so very happy to have had the opportunity to work with these students.  I hope that I was able to teach them all that was possible in this specific class so that they have an amazing rest of their college career and beyond.

As we strive to improve our courses, we'd appreciate additional feedback regarding your experience in the course, including but not limited to the instructor, readings and lectures. Please be as specific but constructive as possible.

• As a whole, I think these projects need to be reviewed. In my case, I was fortunate enough to have a professor who addressed this problem & made the necessary changes. I don't find it helpful to have projects that aren't relevant to my degree. I would rather have a real-life experience like branding a company & giving a presentation instead of designing packages. 
  
  
• I absolutely loved having Sam as my instructor. She wants us to succeed as students, respects us, and understands that we're under a lot of pressure. She's really cool and tries to make our projects as relevant to what we'll be doing in the real world as possible. She teaches uswhat we need to know and manages to teach and critique without degrading our work. She's helpful and knowledgeable in the Graphic Design major. She's one of my favorite teachers— especially because she puts up with my crap and knows how to take a joke even if it's just a tad insulting. :) 
  
  
• I feel as though the book wasn't used as much as I thought it would be. We had two quizzes during this class and good study guides were provided so that the book wasn't as necessary. Definitely a class you could share a book in. My teacher, Samantha Barbour, was wonderful. She always provided constructive feedback and really allowed us to make each project our own, feeling very few limitations. When the other teachers were expecting things from their students that didn't makes sense or had no explanation, Sam offered to talk it over with us and sometimes make a compromise that made the most sense to everyone. She really strived to relate to our class and make us feel very confident in our work.
  
  
• I like this course I thought it ran well and all the sections worked well together. I really like my teacher and how she interacted with the class. 
  
  
• I think that at the beginning of the course there should be more taught about how to use the specific programs to make the projects a lot easier.
  
  
• In my second year of being in the College of Design, this has by far been the most encouraging class I have taken. Instead shooting down an idea completely, our instructor would work with what you have and help you make changes accordingly. This helped students to believe in their projects and was a huge confidence booster.
  
  
• It would be helpful to have more in class critics, instead of just walk arounds. Sam did an amazing job bringing the class together, it made it a place where I felt I could get a lot of feedback. Also, Sam was very passionate and helpful. She did a great job and made the class better as a whole. 
  
  
• Sam is an amazing instructor for this class and I enjoyed how she challenged me daily!
  

As part of the course I taught, I shook things up a bit by changing project two.  The learning objectives were the same but I changed the project and some of the focus.  Instead of redesigning the last project to fit a specific target audience, I had the students design a faux company and learn how to research target audience, get involved in their topic, learn how to present to a class and a client, as well as work on their confidence in believing that what they are designing is good.  I also changed the last project (project 4) to allow students to focus more on social issues that they cared about.  The worked on their presentation skills with this project as well.  Below are responses asking the students what they thought about the projects.  I put in some of the students comments a small note about what project they were talking about.  I have highlighted those in blue. 

• Although it was the most challenging for me, the last project (project 4) designing for a social issue was really helpful. It made me think outside my comfort zone and really design with the intent of the viewer in mind, not just what I personally liked. 
  
  
• Every project helped me in improving my graphic design skills. We changed the second project which resulted in the whole class improving their presentation skills which is a crucial part of being a graphic designer. 
  
  
• I like all the projects. The one that stuck out to e the most was project 2. However, my class was the class that changed project 2. I thought the change was necessary in developing young graphic designers. I learned so much and can really apply it to the rest of my career. I also really liked project 3. 
  
  
• I liked both the packaging project and the mark project (project 2) best out of all of our projects. They seemed most applicable to a realistic graphic designer's assignment/ job. Plus I liked the creativity that was allowed through the mark project because we were allowed to create our own company.
  
  
• I really found the final two type projects to be extremely helpful in helping me understand the basics of laying elements on a page. I also found the mark creation project (project 2) helped me to understand the importance of iteration and experimentation.I enjoyed the first project, and I understand its place, however I think it can be done in a more effective way. 
  
  
• I think the worst project was the boxes. (project 1) It seems like that project came too early in the semester. It would have been more useful if we could have done the 3rd project 1st. It doesn't make sense to me to not really talk about grids until the third project. How can you grade us on our use of grid for the first 2 projects when we haven't properly been taught it until the 3rd. (and having a brief powerpoint does not count as properly teaching us grid.)
  
  
• I thought many of the projects were a bit outdated & monotonous as we went from one to the next. Sam was able to stir the pot & added a new spin to these projects & made my class experience very enjoyable. 
  
  
• I thought that the brand logo project was the hardest and most time consuming and would be more helpful if that project had a longer period of time to work on it. (project 2)
  
  
• Loved the second project where we designed a combination mark around our company.
  (Project 2)
  
  
• The third project, (the grid project), seems the most applicable to future classes and careers.

Finally the students were asked if they had any suggestions on what they would like to see in future classes to build on the skills they learned in this class?  Below are their responses. I have highlighted some of the ones that are directed more toward things I had control over.  Things like the list of fonts and typekit was not something I was in control of.  These were in the syllabus and since I was running on a older version of Adobe I was not aware of the restrictions of the cloud. Also, I was not able to teach more about the programs because the students were in another class that was suppose to teach them the programs while our courses ran side by side during the semester.  When I saw the students were struggling with programs I would design lectures to teach them some of the basics. 

• I would like to see projects that are current and push the whole program to be better. Sometimes the project statements are so restraining. Also, if you make us stick to required fonts, why not make sure that we actually have them on typekit or already on our computers (because fonts are expensive.) I probably only had about 10 or 15 of the fonts on that list. 
  
  
• Make sure the syllabus is updated so the assignments due each day can be known by the class. Also be sure the students understand what all the steps are during each project. Otherwise they won't know what to focus on for each step as an individual.
  
  
• Maybe a little more instructor on how to do certain things in the programs, I know that's more what 275 is but we did not learn anything.
  
  
• More professors should take Sam's approach & push their students to make a difference in design instead of creating a project for the sake of a grade. 
  
  
• More projects like the revised project 2 with real world application. 
  
  
• The large group walk through critiques are really helpful because they allow you to see not only your sections work, but everyone in your level of graphic design.