Semester Reflection

There were a lot of different assignments that we did this semester and some really stood out to me, I truly got something out of them. Rwanda is the number one thing I enjoyed working on and learning about because we watched movies, read articles, did research, and role played. For role-playing my group was Juvenal Habyarimana the former president of Rwanda. Although he didn’t always make the best decisions I felt there were a lot of good arguments he could make against the other groups like Paul Kagame and Uganda. Paul Kagame was the accused of shooting down President Habyarimana’s plane and killing him and Uganda was holding Tutsi’s where they trained an army and came back to Rwanda to cause chaos. It was funny because after learning about Rwanda we watched “Hotel Rwanda” which I had seen once before but now that I had prior knowledge about the subject, the movie made a lot more sense to me and it portrayed the situation very well from the people’s point of view.


“The Man in the Well” was a great story because it really made you think about what’s behind the story and even after listening to it a couple times it was hard to decode. But what I learned is that there really isn’t just one answer, it’s all about you interpretation. I learned more about how to think outside of the box. The first thing we talked about in class was what culture was and when watching “I’m Normal, You’re Weird” it tested peoples openness to other cultures and the way they do things. Even though people are capable of understanding some things it is impossible to accept everyone’s way of thinking. Also it shows how moving to different cultures can sometimes take a toll on your own culture by changing you. Not everybody is like that though some still continue the traditions of their culture when they move somewhere different.


I actually kind of liked doing the weekly articles about China, Iran, etc. they gave me the chance to express my opinion about the current news going on. Also after writing these a few times it made my opinion more intelligent sounding and understandable to people who are even on the opposing side. Doing this had already made my writing skills in general a lot better. The movie “The Power of One” was a great learning experience movie but also had a good story line to keep people watching. Throughout PK’s like he had always been accepting of the black people and throughout the movie went through some rough patches but always continued to treat them like any other person and stand up for them. Through these hard times PK nearly quit helping a couple times but was always reminded what he had already done so far. I felt truly terrible because all the people he loved were killed.

This semester I clearly learned a lot and even though I don’t normally like school I surprisingly liked the assignments we did.