Peace Corp Fellows Times Fall 2011
Student Reflection: by Imotep Bey, Roberto Herrera, Javis Perez and Michael Rodriguez We were excited for the opportunity to visit a recording studio, but were more excited at the possibility of actually making a professional recording. Some of us have been lucky enough to have already done recordings before and for others this will be our first time. Mostly, we are looking forward to seeing the final goal of this service learning project being complete. It seems many of our classmates viewed this project as nothing more than just a pipedream, something that sounded fun and exciting, but would never actually happen. As the date of the recording session drew near, we realized that this was really going to happen and that we were going to need to practice and be ready. One thing that made this challenging for us was having to write poetry and flows that actually tell a story or have a message. A few of us are more accustomed to just writing down whatever comes to our heads and being fine with that as long as it rhymes. Also, our teacher said that we could not use profanity which was a big challenge for us. Our teacher said using profanity is just a way to get around expressing what you are really trying to say, so it was challenging to actually communicate our frustrations and feelings in rhyming rather than just four letter words. It has also been difficult having to meet after school because a few of us play sports or have extra classes in the late afternoon. When lots of people are involved, it gets hard to meet. We were determined to be ready though. We prepared for months. We were patient, and were just very anxious to get it done. We were also very excited to have our words recorded on a CD. It was fun showing it off to our friends and families and showing people that even when it doesn’t seem like there is much to do to keep yourself out of trouble, you can always write.
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