It's over. Two years ago I entered the colourful lobby of the CDM and anxiously began my MDM journey. Over these two years, I've made new friends, created a portfolio full of work, struggled, succeeded, failed, and learned. The MDM is not a program of lectures and exams and papers - it's one of experience, learning through doing. I have done much. I've worked on interactive installations, 3D video games, digital classroom materials, scientific simulations. Things that before starting the degree I hadn't even heard of.

I'm fortunate to have had this blog to document the experiences from the first weeks on. The consistency of the themes of collaboration and experimentation coupled with real world feasibility speaks to the true depth of experience we have had. Sure there were frustrations over the years, teams that didn't gel, projects that weren't completed, ideas that flopped. But from it all, through it all, we have learned how to take our skills and maximize the possibilities of the digital medium.

I struggled with what I should focus on in this final post as an MDM student. I've settled on the idea that at this point of change in our lives, a point of moving forward, the most beneficial thing is glancing backward. To that end, here are some highlights from this blog over the past two years.

It's both an end and a beginning for me. It's my last semester of my degree and the beginning of a new project. Beginnings and endings generally bring the excitement and anxious anticipation that comes with change; this past week has been no different. 01/10/2008

A confrontation with complexity, when approached with confidence and persistence, is often an invigorating event.  I’m referring to those moments when you’re staring at a problem, whether it’s  math or deciphering a line from Joyce or doing a crossword on Sunday morning, and you get it. That split second when the mind relaxes and a burst of extra synapses fire; it’s the ‘aha’ moment.  One of the wonderful things about the educational environment is the opportunity for these moments. The goal of education is to challenge yourself with complexity and have those ‘aha’ moment.  

The experience of the ‘aha’ moment in understanding is universal. We’ve all been there at one time or another, even if it was simply the ‘aha’ moment of getting that ironic joke your uncle made at dinner.

What I think is a little more elusive is the ‘aha’ moment in creation.  And perhaps this is the difference between undergraduate and graduate studies - undergrad is about the 'aha' of understanding while grad studies are about the 'aha' of creation. 03/30/2008

The energy surrounding these projects is a different than the first round. We all seemed a little frenzied back in September trying to figure out to coordinate our teams and get the job done, now, though, we are progressing with a confident rhythm that has evolved over the first half of the semester.  11/01/2008

Every Monday we start the week off with Improv class. It was this class I was most skeptical about coming in to the program but have learned to appreciate how integral it is to what we are doing at the MDM. It’s in Improv where we break down the walls of creative collaboration and collectively bang our heads together in expressions of artistic team work. 10/27/2008

 

If you're a fan of my blog, don't worry I'll continue writing - just not sure where yet.

Ryan Nadel survived the MDM Program.