Before the start of the quarter, my thoughts of empire were more vague and undeveloped. I was aware that America could very much be considered an empire, but most of my education in high school had been focused toward ancient European empires, such as the Roman Empire, which is what I was expecting this curriculum to focus more towards. Although this curriculum was fairly reminiscent of the education I received in tenth and eleventh grade because it was dealing with the same subject matters, I found that my prior existing knowledge helped me start off with a foundation that was then built upon with what we learned this quarter. Most of the readings I dealt with in high school were essays that my own teachers had written to explain the source material we were studying, but this time I had the chance to read over the source material itself, for example with Rousseau, which was useful in providing me new information I had not learned in school before as well as providing enough of a challenge that was not too difficult to get through.
One thing that I found extremely surprising, and to a certain extent, even disappointing, was the large amount of overlap that my high school education had with this quarter. The reason why I say I was a little bit disappointed is because although I was expecting the material to be similar, I was not expecting it to be so similar to the point where almost everything felt like review. One thing I enjoyed doing in high school was reading about people like Rousseau and Foucault, and through the new information I was presented, I was able to find out more about what I myself thought about the world. For example, Foucault introduced to me the idea that history is not a continual movement towards progress as many people like to believe, which I learned about specifically through the treatment of mentally ill individuals throughout the different centuries. Unfortunately, because the material that I learned was so similar, I was not able to come to any conclusions that I knew I agreed with on a personal level and would continue to take with me throughout life. However, something that was definitely interesting for me was the feeling of reading through the material that was familiar and remembering what I had thought about it at that time. Through the readings I managed to have some sort of self reflection where I would recall the opinions I developed a few years ago and was then able to compare them to what I thought now. Interestingly, I found that, at least in the case of these readings, my opinion really had not changed on them.
I do not think my thinking about the world has particularly changed over the course of this quarter, but one of the larger realizations I made this quarter had to do with the election and the resulting discussions that we had in class. Although I considered myself to be fairly good at critically thinking, one thing that I completely disregarded was the fact that most of us here really do live in a bubble. What I mean by this is that I found myself to be completely shocked by Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton, (which I wrote about in a previous post), because I had surrounded myself with people who had similar views to me, and this definitely was aided by the fact that California is an overwhelmingly blue state. This was even to the extent that when I saw someone on my snapchat who supported Trump, my first reaction was thinking that this was a joke. The election results and the discussions we had in class about it definitely helped me realize that, because this “bubble” is something we discussed extensively, along with the fact that everyone in the class had fairly similar views definitely serving to prove that fact. I found it extremely useful that we were provided with a class where we had the ability to break down the material we were learning about and not only learn other students opinions about it, but also find ways to relate the material to our current lives.
I think I have absolutely grown as a writer because this quarter has somewhat helped me break out of the rigid writing rules that I had been taught in high school, as well as helped me develop my ideas and find proof to back it up. Once the essay assignments were introduced to us I found myself doubting my writing because of what I had been taught interfering with the things it seemed I had to do in this quarter to write an effective essay. Throughout my four years of high school I had been taught a singular way to write, and since all the students surrounding me were taught the same way, I was never introduced to anything different. The writing assignments here absolutely pushed me out of my comfort zone, especially with the image analysis, and I have found myself improving specifically in being able to support my claims. The peer evaluations introduced me to different styles of writing and organizing essays, while the meetings encouraged me to develop my own ideas.
afrahhumanities 