Found today really tough. First of all I had a really
restless night’s sleep so I wasn’t feeling my best at all this morning. First
thing we had to do was to watch through the second year’s presentations which
were updated from last week. I kind of felt that I was giving out wrong
opinions about the second year’s work during this, especially since Neil
thought I was being too critical on one, and too generous on another. I also
notice that some are a lot more confident than others.
Then, we had to work in groups in a student debate, which
I found really tough. We had to argue that games were NOT art (which I don’t
feel is true, I feel that games CAN be classed as art) and how 3D graphics
improve films (which I feel CAN be true, it just depends on the film). The
first part, up until lunchtime, I felt I did well in, because I did contribute
a lot of ideas to the argument we had to make, but when we had to do individual
research, I found that really tough and broke down a bit, which is a shame,
because that’s the first time I’ve properly got upset since the start of the
new course. However, I did feel I knew the answers to what I was researching,
from general knowledge and experience, as well as the discussion this morning,
however, I just wanted to justify my thoughts on the argument with research. My
questions/statements were very hard to research too, and I was stressing as
well because Neil didn’t give us that much time to research things.
When we got to actually debating the argument, I felt
that I didn’t come across as very clear, I felt I messed up my words a lot, and
repeated myself a lot. Neil also said we had to talk for 2 minutes too, and I
found it very hard to fill that time. I felt I was put on the spot quite a lot.
However, Linda did say I did do very well to overcome my nerves and that I
shouldn’t be too hard on myself, and did so well despite how upset and stressed I was before. She told me to try and focus more on my positives, and
she did help me to feel better about myself. I just felt like how I felt when I
told all the first years about my Autism yesterday, I was worried how others
would react if they were to see me upset, I was worried if they would judge me
or reject me or think I’m an idiot, freak, etc. This did remind me of the time
I felt when I first got to Rome and everything was really overwhelming, and
when Jake and Zoe tried to make me feel better, which did really mean a lot and
I really valued their friendship.
Although I did notice that Annanda was giving a very good
argument, and it looked as though he and Todd were going to have a really huge
debate at one point. I think Todd found it quite hard to understand what
Annanda was saying, but I feel Annanda did make a lot of valid points in this
debate. Something I’ve noticed about Todd is that he’s very opinionated and is
not afraid to speak his mind, and I feel sometimes he does come across as a bit
brash with what he has to say, and one thing he did say that bothered me
personally is that he said I was the “weak link” in my group because of my
honesty. I think this was because I remember saying that I’ve cried at the
stories of some games in the debate, despite having to write an argument
against games having emotional connections with the designers and audience (I
didn’t say this in the actual debate, just in the discussion this morning.) I
do feel, however, that I’ve always seen my honesty as a strength, not a
weakness, and that I do disagree with some of the things Todd says, such as he
would have found it a lot easier to write an argument against games being art,
and I found it really difficult.
I feel that I've learned from today that I can find it difficult to be forced into talking, or "debating" in front of a large group of people, especially if I'm not prepared. I also think that I do need to have more confidence and believe in myself more, something I've always struggled with.
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