Last Blog

This weeks blog will be dedicated to the semester as a whole, which I can't believe is already coming to an end. It is crazy to take a step back and think that in a week, my room will be empty and my freshman year of college will be over! It is also really crazy to think I will already be done with my freshman sequence already, it just seems like this year only just started. Look at that, just like high school, time is flying by. I liked our class, and I am glad that I chose this sequence for sure. I really learned something, and frankly, much more than I would have learned in say American Civilization where I would have already known a lot of what the class was focusing on. This class gave me a unique opportunity not only to skip over all of my general education classes, but also gave me the chance to learn something about our American neighbors to the South. I liked the overall layout of the class with prof's Stark and Serrata teaching independently, but i think the papers and discussion questions would have been easier and more effective had the two lectures stayed closer to one another. It seemed like a lot of the time we would be learning about one country, but then talking about a whole different country the next hour, and it lead me to sometimes mix up the countries in general. That said, talking about countries independently allows us to cover more over a shorter time. I also liked the attempts made to make the class interesting, like the trip to Chicago, as well as the dance lessons, I only wish we could have done more things like that, especially back in the first semester. Once again I will say that I loved not having tests in this class, and I did not have to worry about memorizing each country for the test and then forgetting it afterwards. Instead, the papers made me learn and think while writing them. I would however suggest having peer editing all 4 times, because the papers tend to come out better that way. The projects also gave a unique experience to learn, and was especially good for learning to work in groups with your members to make the best documentary possible, and I would suggest continuing this. Overall, this class was unique, and unlike anything I had ever had in a school atmosphere in terms of structure, events, lack of tests, and papers, and I think that overall, it was beneficial to me.