Dear Macaulay Honors College,
Last weekend, MHC organized the STEAM festival for seminar 1 and 3 classes. I’ve been to research symposiums before, and the STEAM festival was not up to par.
I felt the whole event was, ironically, uneventful and disorganized. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not just a “salty” student who’s mad my weekend was wasted. Instead, I’ll approach the event in a non-biased way as much as possible to provide feedback for future events. My experience may have been completely different than of someone else’s since the STEAM festival was held on two days of the weekend. So, here I go:
The failure of a meaningful experience for the STEAM festival begins with the preparation for it. I felt there was a miscommunication between our us project members and the guidelines for our works of art; we were thrown into this project without much guidance on how to analyze Baruch’s art pieces. So, our ability to meaningfully create an analysis on what our chosen artwork’s message was trying to assert in the world.
Upon the arrival of the actual festival though, I felt chaos around me. My group and I were tucked in the basement corner with our art projects. I spoke to other groups, and they themselves had no idea what we were supposed to do. In total, we had two visitors during the full three hours at the festival, and only one actually asked us questions. The whole event was awkward and uneventful. I was excited to talk about our findings and showcase our audio guide created. I imagined professors and professionals walking around to each booth to discuss our projects. But, only students and our ITF was really the audiences for the STEAM festival.
Maybe it’s bad that I had such high expectations for the event. Perhaps if I ventured out more to other booths/project groups, I could have found more meaning from the festival. But I guess my passion for the event died once I realized the intended content my group and I created had no purpose because of the lack of audience to provide feedback.
To leave this with a more positive note, I’m optimistic for next year’s STEAM festival. I now know that visiting other projects is the way to go, instead of constantly waiting for others to visit ours. I also am hopeful for tomorrow’s Arts in New York City class to be a place/medium where my group and I can show our findings. Overall, I hope to end the complaining here about the STEAM festival because at the end of the day, it’s what we make of it.
This is my last post of the semester. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my blogs as much as I enjoyed writing them. I hope you have a happy holidays!
Signing out,
Kristy Wu
I understand your disappointment somehow since the same thing happened during our session as well. Most of our projects were hung at the very back of the basement without lighting and people could barely notice them. The central space were all filled with seminar three projects, which people could spot and interact much more easily. However, what was ironical was that this gave us some free time to go around and see other projects, which somehow compensated the boredom.
I totally agree with your comments! I was in a similar situation as no one came to approach my project because it was placed at a very awkward location. However, I was able to walk around and see what other people did for their projects. Next year, you should definitely try and learn from what other students have done for their projects as well!