Friday, September 26, 2014

Learning Journal 4: Pat Watson


I thought that today’s presentation from Pat Watson was an absolute delight, Pat is an amazing teacher and I always relish the chance to enjoy his presentation.  He’s got a real personal style and flair for public speaking that either really jives with you or really doesn’t.  Even Pat himself will tell you that he’s the kind of teacher that doesn’t really have a middle ground when you get down to it, people either love him or they don’t and to their credit I can see why.  This is my second semester working under Pat Watson while definitely working much ore closely; in spring 2013 I had him for 3D character and environment modeling of characters and this semester he’s both running my Multimedia class and my internship working with the Monterey Historical museum and I’ve found he has a very unique teaching style that I would describe as intense if but for the negative connotations that word has.  The thing about Pat’s approach that I like is how little hand holding there is, he’s certainly willing to help but if he’s assessed you to have the skills to accomplish a task he won’t micromanage you or give you step-by-step instructions, just the command to go forth and accomplish.  I see why others don’t like this approach though, you end up seriously out on a limb and you have to take a lot of your own initiative but I think people tend to misinterpret his sink or swim attitude as dismissive, which is not the case.  I’ve always got the impression that if Pat Watson says “okay now just go do it” that is him saying “I believe in you to accomplish this without my help, you got this.” And I find that to be very encouraging. 

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