All of my courses have something in common? You don't say!

This past week, I realized that the topics I'm studying this semester are all fitting together like pieces in a puzzle. On Sunday, my Advanced Media Studies class took a break from our work to visit the exhibit in the art gallery. Right now, the Underwood Foundation is showing a collection of photos taken in Vietnam, Namibia, and Uganda; the photos all told stories of the people that live in those countries. The gentleman that spoke to us stressed the importance of ethics in photography. Although a photograph shows what actually exists, it is up to the photographer to include or exclude people or things nearby that could change the viewer's perspective on what is in the photo. Words associated with a photo tell the subject's story to the viewer; the photographer must be careful not to tie any words to the picture that could be detrimental to the subject.

This semester, I'm taking a course in digital photography. At first, photography seems very simple, but as I pay closer attention to detail both in the way the photo is taken and the subject in the photo, I realize that there are more variables and more choices that I need to make. Especially when photographing people, I will need to keep in mind what role ethics plays in photography.

I'm also learning about ethics this semester in a broader sense. The course, Studies in Ethics, explores what is ethical and unethical in writing and media; the message itself could be true and important for the audience to hear, but if the means of conveying that message are unethical, the audience could be misled. The person sending the message must be mindful of this because he or she can lose credibility in the eyes of the audience.

This connects to yet another field of study I'm looking at through Advanced Media Studies. In this course, we're looking at how media has evolved over time and how we, the viewers, are affected by it.

Writing, of course, applies to ethics and media in many of the same ways. My entry, this time, refers to all of my courses, and there is only one I haven't mentioned.

My support area, which I wrote about previously, is in Spanish Language and Cultures. I'm working to become fluent in Spanish, and I'm making great progress, if I do say so myself. I'm open to the idea of writing in Spanish because although I'm unable to articulate my ideas as well in Spanish as in English, that would be my ultimate goal regarding a foreign language. Should I get to the point where I can write at a professional level in Spanish, all of these concepts of ethics and writing would apply as well.

By the end of this semester, I think I'll have a better feel for what I want to do with my degree or at least the application of what I'm learning to different career possibilities. These classes and the skills I'm learning are coming together more perfectly than I could've ever planned.