Blog 8: Final Reflection

 What inspired me to create this project was wanting to learn more about the world around me and share the information I’ve learned with others. Especially in a setting like Hawken, we are too often caught in our own private school bubble, when the real world is nothing of the sort. It’s not particularly anyone’s fault. However, I think it is important to understand the flawed systems that we live in, and part of that learning is being exposed to the issues around us. I definitely was not thinking about these important inequities until COVID-19 and The Black Lives Matter movement really exacerbated issues of inequity in the health system in 2020. I think that especially with the COVID-19 vaccine, we can see how disparities in who is getting the vaccine based on race and socioeconomic status mirror inequities that have been present for many years.

Initially, we had planned on producing just one episode, and I’m glad we made that decision because we just were able to finish with the timeframe we had. We had set up goals and deadlines to meet in terms of booking and interviewing guests, recording, and editing. And while I think they were pretty realistic, we didn’t quite make the initial “deadlines” we set out for ourselves, but the bulk of the work was completed in a smaller timeframe than we expected, especially with the editing.

We were very engaged in our project. I really enjoyed all the interviews we had speaking with our different guests. Every interview lasted at least thirty minutes long, and everyone had some very insightful things to say. We interviewed seven people in total, and in all honestly, we could create one episode from every person if we wanted to.

The quality of the mentorship with Evergreen Podcasts was extremely strong. Our mentor Brigid Coyne taught us the ins and outs of how to make a podcast, and we always had assistance alone the way, whether it be having a sound engineer with us during an interview on Squadcast, a producer helping us record the narration, or a sound engineer helping us mix. They were extremely patient and respectful, and we are so grateful that they treated us like members of their team and let us use all their facilities for free.

One thing that I learned is that making a podcast is way harder than it looks. It takes a lot of collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, time management, and passion, which I think are definitely some of the skills I took out of this experience.

While I don’t think that we could partner with Evergreen Podcasts for a service day. However, if a student ever wanted to take a crack at making a podcast, whatever the topic, they need to do it at Evergreen Podcasts. Their quality of mentorship and production is unmatched.

My advice to rising juniors and seniors on planning their projects is to not overwork yourself but engage in work that has meaning to you that you may not have the opportunity to do in the future. I really enjoyed my experience, and despite some brief moments of stress, and I really going to miss it.

In conclusion, I would really like to thank Brigid Coyne and the team at Evergreen Podcasts for being such great people to work with, for mentoring us and being patient with us the whole way, and letting us crash their studio and create a podcast on our own. Sweta and I are so incredibly grateful and we really hope to continue working on this podcast and with Evergreen in the future.

-Wilson Ha

Comments

  1. Dr. PJune 10, 2021 at 7:30 AM

    I am really looking forward to listening in on your podcast and hearing how you blended the variety of perceptions and input you gathered!

    ReplyDelete

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