PHOTO ESSAY 2020
A Reflection of 2020 and My School Year
2020 was truly an incredible year, on many accounts. This year has brought a great amount of stress, disbelief, hopelessness, and general negativity to my mental state as a whole, and only something truly incredible could’ve affected me this way. College, especially the first few semesters, is supposed to be an experience towards independence, responsibility, social interaction, and learning. This year has all but taken away most of those experiences, and we were forced to go through a ghost of what was supposed to be. Near the beginning of the pandemic, I was still going out with my family and enjoying ourselves. Of course, we abided by social distancing, but we, like many, never expected the issue to grow exponentially in size. Due to the growing problem near the beginning of the year, I grew accustomed to expecting the school year to be as it was, a very poor replacement for a critical time in my life. The many growing sources of negativity throughout this year- social justice, COVID-19, college- took a heavy toll on my mental health. There were many days where I despaired over the possibility of myself or others contracting COVID-19, or getting injured or killed by a police officer, or falling to depressive thoughts. These were the many things I dealt with before and during my college semester. But saying that the experience was all bad would be a lie- I made the best of what was given to me. Although physical interaction was greatly limited, my virtual interaction was the primary method of communicating. Some of the funniest and positive moments with my friends were experienced over video/voice software and games during this semester. Even though we were socially or physically distant, it didn’t feel as if we were actually apart from each other. Staying in contact with a close group of friends through these mediums was my main method of coping with the terrible circumstances. The virtual environment was always somewhere I could go for positivity. My family was also a great resource for positivity, always being there for me during my lowest points. They were the greatest source for self-confidence and reassurance, and I truly appreciate their compassion for me.
This semester of college definitely taught me the essence of perseverance. College also still had the effect of enhancing my understandings of the responsibilities of being independent. Although this year provided many uncertainties, I still found the college experience to be worthy and enjoyable, due to my efforts to stay safe and stay smart. This year, although preventable, was something out of my hands, and the best I could possibly do at the moment is and will be to push on and deal with it. Also, with the way things are going, next year will be mostly the same. As a society, we often label years as separate things, which can be logical in many cases, but things such as these cannot be separated by year. It isn’t a bad thing to be hopeful for next year, but it has to be understood that the year itself won’t wipe away the curses of this year when it arrives, but we as a collective group have to make the change happen ourselves, or next year will be a carbon copy of this one.
PHOTO ESSAY 2021
A Reflection of 2021 and My School Year
For many of us, this semester has been very unique in that it forced many to re-adapt to how things were pre-pandemic, even those that have already experienced a normal college semester. Even though I was on campus for the last two semesters, I still wasn’t prepared for the drastic switch to normalcy that this semester imposed. Previously forcing myself to adapt to the entirely online academic environment to just switch right to a completely in-person one, was very jarring, but necessary. This semester, with many sharing similar feelings, was realistically my actual freshmen year. Certain things, such as not needing to completely prepare for class, not having a roommate, and somewhat easier online work, did not apply to this semester. I now had to learn to properly manage my time, as classes were now physical and not virtual. Dining hall food was not as easily transportable as before- I had to dedicate time to actually dine-in. I also had to learn how to live with a roommate for the first time ever- even though I am real close friends with my roommate, it was still a new experience to get used to. And by far the most daunting task was properly managing my time with my internship on top of the high demands of the Computer Science major. Projects that needed to be done for work often conflicted and added more to the pile of other homework, so learning to properly divide the load, and often choose priorities, was pretty challenging.
The Scholars experience allowed me to view the concept that we interact with daily, but often undermine and ignore its importance in society since its creation- the media. It taught to more deeply understand what I’m viewing on any form of media. It taught me the great importance of actually interacting with media, as in not just taking what is seen at face-value, but scrutinizing its portrayal and the information it’s trying to convey. Especially in today’s society, being an active audience is much more important than being a passive one, as you can often lose a sense of truth and individuality of things if you essentially follow what is told to you without forming your own opinions. The part of this program that influenced me the most was the discussion on misinformation. Misinformation is a massive detriment to forward thinking advancements as it spreads fear, hate, and ignorance. This affects me because advancements in technology heavily rely on the support of the public. If people were avidly against cell phones or the Internet in large amounts, we wouldn’t be where we are today. New advancements such as 5G have some of the worst misinformation, but people end up believing it out of pure fear and ignorance.
The most direct relation between media and my intended field of internetworking/cybersecurity is that we are the ones that form the media itself- the foundation to allow the immense stream of data to pass around in modern society. Also, on a deeper level, the advancements of security within these spaces directly impact the use and feelings of users. A deeper sense of security using these services allows people to more freely speak their mind and share their thoughts with others. The level of security can also be a reflection on thoughts towards society. If a big tech company such as Sony gets compromised, it directly affects people’s thoughts towards the safety of these services. So, in my future field, it’ll be important to keep in the mind the indirect and direct effects on society through the advancements of cybersecurity. As McLuhan said, “The media is the message.”
WHAT DID YOU DO FOR YOUR PRACTICUM?
For my practicum, I am currently doing an internship for UMIACS, which is an on-campus help desk located in the Brenden Iribe building. This job takes many forms and responsibilities, including interacting with users within the building and other affiliated locations on campus, maintaining and adding to our infrastructure, and responding to time-sensitive events that may happen at any time. It also includes many other responsibilities, such as installing operating systems on provisioned devices, maintaining a pool of loaner devices, performing troubleshooting on UMIACS-supported user or service devices, and helping users connect to our infrastructure based on what type of work/lab they are a part of.
HOW DID YOU FIND/IDENTIFY YOUR PRACTICUM, AND WHAT ADVICE YOU WOULD GIVE TO FUTURE MEDIA SCHOLARS ON IDENTIFYING A PRACTICUM SITE?
I found UMIACS through a Piazza post for one of my Computer Science courses. They mentioned it might be helpful and insightful for those that may want to pursue a similar goal that the internship at UMIACS is providing. Seeing as I want to go into a networking/cybersecurity field, I figured that this would be a good opportunity to grasp a feeling of what a job like that would entail. Some advice that I would provide to those looking for a good practicum to do would be to look for things that are closely related to what you want to do in the future. This will give you more motivation to actively search for opportunities and give your all to learn how things work when you start your work than if you went for something that wasn’t aligned with your goals. Another piece of advice would be to contact any instructors or anyone within your interest field. I was pretty lucky that I didn’t need to ask mine, he just provided an opportunity for all, but it will make the searching process much simpler as they have a higher chance to find good opportunities for you.
WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM YOUR PRACTICUM?
Other than teaching the basic responsibilities that come with a job, I learned many specific things that come with a technical job such as this. I learned many things about interacting with Linux, monitoring systems, and protocols on interacting with users. I’ve never used any Unix systems before this, so I had to learn a lot of new things to properly perform the tasks. I also had to interact and learn the many services/software we use to perform many of the tasks. All of the instructions for essentially anything that needs to be done are documented and compiled into a staff wiki, which was the primary place I would spend my time learning things. Other than steps, the wiki also contains important information about the many operations of UMIACS and the operations of core infrastructures and such.
HOW HAVE YOU GROWN AS A PERSON, STUDENT, AND/OR PROFESSIONAL?
As this is my first job, it provided many lessons to help me grow into my future. During the semester, it taught the importance of proper time management. Dealing with work as well as a class often provided a great challenge that often made me plan out for the future. As for growing as a professional, I have learned many things in this field that will help me in any future advents. One thing that directly shows my progress in the internship is my Standards Checklist. This checklist is an important record to track your progress on completing some of the many goals that I should be familiar with after a certain time within the internship. Seeing as how I started with nothing complete, my progress is something to be proud of as I only have 3 left (3 haven't been accepted yet on the checklist).
HOW CAN YOU APPLY YOUR PRACTICUM EXPERIENCE TO YOUR LIFE/CAREER MOVING FORWARD?
My practicum experience can directly be applied to my future life/career as they are very similar to each other. The many specific technological steps I learned during my practicum can be applied to the job of my future. My practicum also will help me towards my future goals by giving me a chance to interact with users, in which many starting technological jobs are deeply involved. Many of the things listed in the previously shown checklist are things that many technical companies employ within their services, so I will have already done these things, giving me prior knowledge. Another possibility that this practicum provided is me working for UMIACS for my future job, as many others have after graduating from college.
WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE REST OF YOUR TIME AT UMD, POST-GRADUATION, AND YOUR PROSPECTIVE CAREER/FIELD OF INTEREST?
For the rest of my time at UMD, I plan to stay at UMIACS until I may become uncomfortable with the workload from work and school being combined to large amounts. I may also branch out to a more specifically cybersecurity/internetworking internship when I reach my upper-level courses that cover these topics, as this is what I plan to focus on in the future. Another pathway I can take is to work towards some certifications for cybersecurity or networking as I’ve done in the past. These can help me in some of the more specific internships that I may want. Of course, these things can also be applied to after graduation if schoolwork demands its own specific attention. Attempting these things during school can provide me a nice edge over others for post-graduation, but I will keep my stress as a priority so I don’t inadvertently burn myself and end up losing progress.
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MEDIA, SELF, AND SOCIETY
SCHOLARS AND UNIVERSITY EXPERIENCE
For my time within the Scholars community, I would like to gain knowledge of how media affects society on a large scale. For the overall university experience, I would like to gain responsibility and self-esteem skills as well as developing skills in the internetworking field.
Nov. 14, 2020