We Are: The Arts: Journal #6- What I've Learned

I feel like over the semester I have learned a lot about writing, Penn State, the arts, and how they are connected and always have been. I found this course particularly interesting because me and my room mate are both musicians and we realized quickly up here that there weren’t a lot of places to play music and not a lot of people to play with either. Because of this, we had multiple discussions about how maybe we picked the wrong school if we wanted to play music. To us, there wasn’t really any art at Penn State. Through this class I have learned that arts are indeed everywhere here at Penn State and you don’t have to look very hard to find them.

It might be true that there aren’t a lot of bands here at Penn State, but that was no reason to count out the arts all together. I have since learned that the arts are pretty much anywhere you look. Whether its anything from painting, to dancing, to poetry, to acting you can always find a Penn State student ready to share their talents with the rest of the school. Now I think it is a shame that people not only look at Penn State as just a school with a football team, but also don’t even consider the arts to be in the picture at all. I was one of those who did not think the arts really existed here. I’ve even come to learn that we have a very impressive theater program here and our very own art museum right on campus. This is something I would have not expected when I first came to Penn State.

Hopefully through our art, we can show the entire world that Penn State is not just a football team, it is quite the opposite. We are a diverse group of individuals who all love and do different things. Yes, some of us like sports, but others have dedicated their life to the arts. If Penn State continues to be as involved in the arts as it is now, then I think it wont be long before people start to really notice in the exact same way I noticed. Pretty much everything I just said I learned about Penn State in this English class, and I think its only a matter of time before other people see the same thing that I do.

I also learned a lot about writing too. I think that I have really improved as a writer during this semester. It just feels like a completely different atmosphere then high school English class. I would say the number one thing I took from the class is to think about your target audience. I have found this to be a great writing tip. It helps you be narrower in your work, and not jumping all over the place. It also has taught me to write somewhat different things based off who my audience is. I especially learned this from writing my memoir. I wrote about wrestling and realized that some things I needed to go into some more detail on since I was writing to none wrestlers. Over all I learned a lot in the class and I feel like I have a lot more to learn about Penn state and writing in general.