Jinhyo – Final Class Reflection

Hi teaching team! Thank you so much for the whirlwind of CS 247G unlike any class I’ve taken before. I thoroughly enjoyed the group project structure where we got to know our teammates, working collaboratively throughout the quarter and embracing all out-of-the-box ideas we had. It was such a unique experience to work so closely with my classmates, as the true result came from working together, not just comparing our answers to see if we got the questions right. 247G really took me for an incessant ride of sketchnotes and late night annotated game plays, caring so much about something that I build with others that I feel like I really left my soul in that classroom.

I joined this class with a curiosity in games as a potential future career. I’ve been finishing my Stanford degrees, developing programming skills with a love for artistic expression. I knew that I wanted to work in entertainment and was thinking about the animation industry. However, game development feels like where my skills in art, design, narrative, and programming all shine, given that they are all things I feel passionate about. I’m very picky about trying to make every aspect of the game intentional if I have the time, and I enjoyed working on this class that no longer felt like just a class. It felt like a future I could live, an insight into the stories I could continue to tell if I just turned towards it. My current dream in life is to publish a well-loved game that fosters deep thinking, reflection on humanity, and a community that is touched, as a result of the narrative I design, by one another. In a way, 247G was my first real step toward that dream that made it feel so much more visceral, right here in front of me, and something I could simply turn to to make me smile.

In 247G, I experienced the challenges of grappling with my own lack of time versus accomplishing the wild visions I had for my projects. I learned a lot about the way I work and how much of myself I attribute to the product—the more creative it is, the deeper I feel the need to give my best. I still feel a distance between my ideals that have yet to exist and my attempt at realizing them, but I think true progress comes from accepting work for what it is, because games are something that can be refined infinitely. It’s great to have a existent something rather than a perfect nothing. This class swept my mind away and took me for an intense ride of personal investment and joyful sparks of creation, orienting me towards a creative future like this to come.