Reflection 6

     There's quite a lot I could say regarding my experience in this course, I will endeavor to keep it succinct.  I did not operate any social media pages prior to taking this course, no facebook or twitter, though I once had a xanga in 7th grade.  I considered my shunning of social media an exercise in avoiding mediocrity, having witnessed second hand the sorts of things my friends post and comment on.  While generally fairly tech savvy, my lack of experience with social media still made this course more challenging than it might have been for more established students.  I always knew that purposing myself toward any mass communications career would require that I eventually participate in social media, but I still told myself I would be deactivating these pages at the end of this course.  That is no longer the case.  I will continue to use facebook, and try to be more active on twitter.  This course was also much more intense than what I was expecting from a global health class.  Though the workload was to a degree influenced by the short session time of 6 weeks, I was still surprised to find it demanding constant attention.  I've done many online courses throughout college, and most of those I could breeze through with minimal effort.  Even considering that this class asked more of me than an average online course, I'd say I prefer it.  I think the primary way in which I'll benefit from this course in the future is through the experience in working with a team to complete a large scale project.  I had never prior to this shared a google doc with other people and simultaneously been working on it while uploading pictures and generating social media content.  It was a very engaging type of environment, our team's facebook group had dozens of posts and hundreds of comments before the end of it.  It was also interesting to learn about some of the nonprofits from a pseudo insider angle.  I enjoyed some of the hangouts more than others, but all were new types of experiences for me.  The way some of these organizations generated interest around their cause, which are not always popular issues, really surprised me and illuminated for me that there are genuine quality interactions of real value occurring across these social media platforms.