So I’ve come to the end of this little school project. I’ve talked about the benefits of listening to both local radio and satellite radio, commented on Time magazine’s March 28 issue, and reviewed three movies: Muppets Most Wanted, Divergent, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

            And the question is: What have I learned from all this, if anything at all? I would say that I’ve learned that you have to be careful about whatever expectations you have when consuming any kind of media. You might just be surprised at how media can thwart them.

            I think I first noticed this when I was reviewing the film, Divergent. I didn’t think much of the film at first; I thought it would be pretty bad, actually. “But what the heck?” I thought. And I found myself actually enjoying certain parts of it and admitting it was ok. But then my opinion went to mediocre as I thought a little more about the movie’s multiple elements and how they all came together into a whole, and I realized despite being surprised, the film really wasn’t all that spectacular anyway.

            My other surprise came when I first saw the headlines for Time magazine. “God at the Movies.” Me being a Christian, my opinion of most media outlets was that they preferred to keep religion out of their articles. But what I read was a fair and in-depth look at Hollywood’s recent focus on Biblical films, once again surprising me and disappointing me as I realized the writer didn’t cover smaller Christian-oriented movies made by churches (I had different expectations in mind for the article).

            Truth is, we all have something in mind when we first read a newspaper or listen to some artist we’ve only heard about or something similar. The real trouble only comes we aren’t willing to look at and listen to the stuff that’s actually in front of us and not put aside our views for just a moment.