Reflective Essay
Introduction
Hello. My name is Noah Brady, and I've attended ACLC since freshman year. Coming from a school environment that was difficult to learn in, I finally found my place at ACLC where I reshaped how I learned. Personal Qualities Over the years I spent at ACLC, I've learned to persevere and become more responsible. When I get started on a new project, I immediately start thinking of ideas and have a set goal in mind. I show up on time with everything I need for the project, no matter how last minute or hectic it can get. Under a self-motivated crunch, I can get things done quickly and efficiently. My sociability has allowed me to make do with whatever team I am placed with. I always put effort into communication to bring all our ideas together and make sure that everyone gets heard. I can adapt and alter my behavior to bring us all to our final goal and can drive even the most unmotivated of peers to push themselves. New Basics I frequently draw, but I don't think that's all art is about. I express myself through various mediums of artwork, whether it be on a piece of paper or through a digital tablet or through the melodies that come from a piano, I know how to express myself in various ways. Sometimes I'll start with a small drawing, and as I draw I imagine what that character is like, thus developing entire stories and worlds for the character to experience and live in. I spend a lot of my time thinking about characters for my video games and for Dungeons and Dragons sessions to use and express how these characters act, and hope that I can have a future career linked to this skill. I've never really liked most ordinary science classes. I struggled wrapping my head around physics, biology and chemistry, but I had a knack for using computers. Ever since I was in middle school, I loved to code and always made something. Not being allowed to play video games only got me more interested and invested in them, and I started to design my own games. I never completed a lot of them, but I found the development process much more fun and interesting than most games I had access to at the time. School projects would be coded, and I'd soon learn how to make my own art and music for my games. Eventually, I joined a competition for coding for the first time, making a small platformer game about aliens and winning in the "best beginner hack" category. I aspire to become a video game designer, developer, engineer or artist with the skills that I learned and will continue to learn. Thinking and Reasoning Skills As an artist, creative thinking somewhat comes naturally to me. When asked for suggestions on a project, I can typically come up with ideas on the spot or give others ideas to work off of. Sometimes my ideas aren't good, but the entire point of ideas is that they can be built on to create better ones. When planning for a project, I typically write down plans in sharpie so I don't erase them when I think it's a bad idea and can bring it back later or use it later. Problem solving is extremely important when you are a programmer. Bugs and errors can frequently come up in a project, and they need to be spotted and resolved before you can proceed. Being a game developer forces one to go through this process. Nitpicking through code to find the error is a tedious and slightly mundane task to most, but it is something that I enjoy doing. Interpersonal Abilities As a game developer, it's important to be able to participate as a team member. My time here at ACLC has helped me improve my ability to get people to cooperate and get work done, and has made me be able to work harder than I ever have before. In the past, I didn't really appreciate group projects because I found it hard to rely on others to get the job done, but if you start to get people talking with each other, the worry of not getting the project done blows away like a breeze. Of course, within these group projects, you'll find people who don't agree on the same thing, which is where negotiation comes in. In disagreements, I often found myself being a mediator of sorts, making sure things stayed calm and also finding a middle ground between the two opposing sides. I'd take ideas from both people and try to come up with some sort of compromise or combination of their ideas and eventually push the project forward without tension or more conflict. Technology I use technology on a daily basis both for work and play. I use calendar apps to keep track of my schedule, use the ACLC Jupiter site to keep track of what needs to be done, and use Discord and email to communicate with others for projects. I have a basic understanding of how computers work, making it easy for me to manually troubleshoot issues people may have. Being a teacher's assistant at ACLC, I've had to resolve many tech related issues such as the projector not connecting to the computer, the class chromebooks lagging out, printers having errors and writing proposals to have school-wide tech issues to be resolved. Conclusion A lot of things about me have changed since I first started attending ACLC. I changed my gender, got a few (bad) haircuts, and now I'm about to graduate and head off to college to focus on what I want to do. I probably would have never solidified my desire to become a game developer if I hadn't attended ACLC, and I'll never forget the guidance, friends, and mentors that taught me how to be myself here. |