It was 7:10 AM when I was racing from the gate to the Student Lab. I had made the grave mistake of forgetting to write a podcast reflection for my group, which was to be presented in front of the class today. As the leader, I asked my members to listen to the collectively chosen podcast (link provided by Mr. Felix) and input their ideas, while I took on the responsibility of summarizing those ideas into a one-page reflection. 

I sat down in the Student Lab, turned on my Mac, logged in and started writing away. Soon enough, words were starting to fill the page, as I sighed in relief. At 7:45 AM, just as I was putting the finishing touches to my reflection, the lights suddenly went out. I would be lying if I said I did not freak out for a split second. There was a small high-pitched mechanical sound in the distance, which blended well with the rumbling of the crowd outside of the Student Lab. One deduction was quickly made: the power is out.

I scaled the steps to level 5 of building 2 in semi-darkness, grateful that RMIT still had a decent secondary power reserve to use for a few back-up lights. As it turned out, the back-up power also took into account the lecturer’s computer and projector, so classes could still go on. The only problem was the half-boiling temperature (ACs were out, too), which Mr. Felix was unfailingly aware of.

Thankfully, the heat could not detract me from the interesting content of today’s session, which was all about showcasing previous students’ works. This was exactly what I had been wanting to see since the beginning of ‘Making Media’. With Mr. Felix’s guide, we went through notable examples of student websites, podcasts, magazines. He also noted that the works shown to us were taken from the semester previous to ours, and included a magazine that was selected for the SCD showcase. Wow.

There were quite a few things to pick up from this session, the first one being how creatively the people that came before me created their podcasts. It seems that, after listening to sample podcasts sent by Mr. Felix, my mind had been fixed upon creating only serious-style programs. This was not the case for many of the podcast that I got to listen to. Some featured a lot of humor, though not always well-toned, while others used scripted events to make the podcast more interesting (especially the Ghost Stories one).

As for the magazines and websites, it was a shame that I could not get ahold of the actual works to use as references, but the brief 5-minute showcase of them did allow me to learn a few useful things. Magazines, for example, usually came with a bar code on their covers. Not only was this a good way to fill negative space but it also added a touch of authenticity and realism to the final product and demonstrated due attention to detail. Meanwhile, websites often came with a footer containing contact information and links to social platforms, which helped visitors to easily find a way to reach the web owners. This was something I never thought of as I was dreaming up my website.