Final Reflection

Overall I think my UC experience was a good one. I enjoyed meeting everyone and I think I formed some good friendships. Although the class wasn’t really something I’m interested in and although I didn’t really talk a lot, I learned a lot listening to everyone. I learned a lot about the different IR theories and enjoyed Professor Jackson’s teaching. I will admit though that throughout most of the class I felt like I never really knew what was going on which was really frustrating at times. Originally I was really upset I was put in the world politics UC because I had my heart set on the Politics in the U.S. UC, but with the people I met here I don’t regret deciding to do this UC.

As for my first semester of college, It wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be, but It definitely wasn’t as good either. I can’t expect the straight A’s that I got in high school and that is something that I will have to adjust to. But I’ve had a lot of fun!

The End of the Beginning

Well, its been fun. Thats about the best summery of the semester i can give. To be honest, I wanted to be the in the UC just because PTJ sounded like an awesome professor. I was taking an IR class at the time I heard about the World Politics class and decided to check it out. After reading into i thought it would be cool. Little did i know I would meet my best friends here. (Aww moment everyone). But decided that i learned more than I ever could have expected. Although I talked the least and did not understand a good quarter of what was going, I still learned more than all of high school when it comes to world politics. I came into this thinking it would be like my IR class where we look at each part of the world and analyze its relations relative to the world. Boy was I wrong.

Now it is the end and I have nothing else to say. Thanks for the ride and remember that Mama D is watching you. GO TEAM!

Reflection 15

It's finally here. The end of the semester. Among other things, this mean's its time for the final World Politics reflection. I'll try and keep it as sappy, saccarine, and long-winded as possible.

I've thoroughly enjoyed this class. It's been the highlight of my first semester at American and one of the best classes I've ever taken, period. In part, I liked the class because I thoroughly enjoy the subject matter. But the greater part of it is because the class has made me grow as an intellectual and taught me to think more rigorously. Professor Jackson did an excellent job of challenging our logic and the assumptions on which our arguments rested, but so did my classmates -- in particular, I'd like to shout out to BoVice and Antonio Ipparalde. it's a sharp contrast from high school, where I could generally get away with any gaping hole in my logic as long as I used pretty metaphors and cited sources properly. Although most people came away with a positive opinion of the class, not everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. One complaint, voiced by several people, was that it had "too much theory". Although I don't agree with this complaint, I do think it suggests ways in which the class could be improved.

International relations is the study of the goals that international actors use to make decisions. If you want to learn about the processes by which decisions are made, take a class in Comparative Politics (which should really be required for international studies majors) and if you want to learn about the issues that states decide on, read The New York Times or The Weekly World News. The goals that we study in international relations generally fall into three categories: realist, liberal, and constructivist. In order to argue about the merit of any actual foreign policy, we must first decide what we want the policy to accomplish. Is it important that our actions support an identity of the United States as a champion of freedom? Or is it more important that our actions support the security of the American government?

However, I do think the class could put greater emphasis on asking students to analyze particular policy solutions from different ideological perspectives. The second half of the semester (the security, prosperity, and justice part) seemed designed to do this, but I think it could have been more explicit in asking: how should we design a system of international justice in order to maximize mutual economic gain? to maximize sovereignty? to support our identity? What perspectives do the policies of great powers most reflect, and how, knowing this, can we engage with these great powers? Although having students teach can be pedagogically useful, in this case I think it undermined making a strong argument for the relevance of international relations theories. We simply didn't have that goal in mind when we were teaching.

Also, a few other comments:

I would have liked to see ProfPTJ interact with us on the blogs more. The syllabus provides a quite reasonable pedagogical explanation for keeping blogs: they create a more dynamic intellectual environment than writing and submitting short papers to the professor. But while I certainly have learned from my peers, feedback from someone who is A) a professional scholar and B) going to be giving us grades is also useful

I didn’t like the simulations all that much. First, I’m not really sure how they tied into the rest of the class. They asked us to form positions and adopt stances on issues that most of us had little to no background on, from the perspective of countries that most of us had little to no background on. Second, the timing of tsecond simulation in particular was very inconvenient. I would have enjoyed the project if I wasn’t worry about several end-of-the-semester research papers at the same time.

How Soccer Explains the World seemed useless. I learned a lot about soccer, which I enjoyed, but I didn’t learn much about the world.

final blog

Firstly, for those of you who did not make it to the Newseum I would definitely recommend it.  I spent the majority of my time in the room that contained every Pulitzer Prize winning photo-- talk about a picture’s worth a thousand words!  My emotion ranged from near tears to overwhelming feelings of laughter and joy within that room.  If you haven’t been that room alone was totally worth a trip to the Newseum.  Another room I thought was interesting talked about reporting in East Berlin during the Cold War,  they.  When you first walk into the room you are facing several sections of the Berlin Wall from the West Berlin side all covered in art are graffiti after looking at that a video instructed you to look at the other side of the wall which as I expected, were clean.  Seeing the contrast for myself was very different from seeing it in pictures or reading about the contrast.

As Tori mentioned in a recent blog post PTJ’s influence makes me wonder what a museum’s message is.  However, even without PTJ’s influence I think I would be able to figure this one out.  Walking through the Newseum and only seeing positivities of the media it is very clear who established it.  It was much more subjective than most non-for-profit museums are.  But despite is subjectivity, I really enjoyed it.

So, the semester is almost over-- wow!  UCWP was not exactly what I thought it would be, but I think I gained more from the experience because of that fact.  My favorite aspect of the class was the fact that it was always a discussion.  Yes, I know I did not usually verbalize much, but I have always gotten a lot out of listening to others.  In a discussion setting I feel that as a class we were independently able to learn what PTJ wanted to teach us through trial and error.  Often, through the realization of error, or that I was first missing the point is when I learned the most.

Snow Crash:Fact or Fiction?

I know this last question is late but with finals and my depression trying to accomplish things has been rough. But time to talk about Snow Crash. Personally I enjoyed the book. I found it thrilling, exciting and funny. I know many people were upset with the sexual references but that is not the point of the book. It is only a part of the narrative. But the point of the book was to offer a look into the future and I believe that Stephenson’s view of the future is a plausible one. Obvious I’m not suggesting that all girls get dentata, but I could see private franchises running the world and the creation of a “metaverse”. First of all there is something like the metaverse now, the Internet. Furthermore, the private sector is growing. With the decrease in regulation in the past 20 years, new doors were opening for the private corporations. If the trend continues then some corporations will have the wealth to create their own private city states. With a trend towards a more laissez faire society, the idea of McDonalds creating its own sub nation in California is not too far fetched.

Looking at this point through a modern lens, it is scary to think that this was written in 1992. With things like Second Life and Playstation’s Home, a metaverse liked described in Snow Crash is being created. The power of private corporations and franchises have risen. About 16 year after this was written, most of the ideas Stephenson talks about are coming true in some form or another. Since parts of the Snow Crash future are already coming true, it is not unreasonable to see the Snow Crash world as a possibility for the future.

Could Snow Crash happen in the future??

Since parts of what Stepheson wrote in Snow Crash have already become reality, I think it’s possible that more of what what is the book could also come true. As I think was mentioned in class, he did a good job predicting the role of computers in today’s society.

A lot of things in the book I could see as being possible in years. What I thought was most interesting is the value of having everything you want when you want it, which is a mindset I think contributes a lot to the future in Snow Crash. We see this kind of behavior now already, all you have to do is go black Friday shopping. This is also a reason that we are in the financial crisis we are in today. People want things that they can’t afford but they aren’t willing to wait for them. (just like people weren’t willing to wait for a pizza to be delievered late in the book)

I hope our society doesn’t lose all its values and traditions though. I don’t want our futue to be taken over by McDonalds! Our society has become more privatized as regulation has decreased, but hopefully we won’t ever get to the place society is at in Snow Crash. I don’t think we will because I’d like to believe we are smart enough as a society to realize when things have gone too far. I think we would stop things before they went toofar as I think they did in the book.

How the financial crisis changed my mind

If I had read Snow Crash a few months ago I would mostly likely be blogging that although the scenario suggested in the book is extremely exaggerated, it does portray possibilities of what the future world might be like.  A few months ago I would have pointed out how overall, government is weakening, especially in terms of its control over financial systems.  As government in Snow Crash is nonexistent and replaced by different franchises it is obviously an extreme example.  I do not think the world would get rid of governmental systems completely, but I do think businesses and corporations are and will continue to have increasing amounts of influence over the government.  Take for instance the United State’s government.  Many political decisions are influenced my non-government forces, for instance, lobbyists, activists, and special-interests groups.  Even though that fact that these groups have so much influence in the United States government is highly criticized, it is not denied.  In addition to the government allowing these types of institutions to influence its actions the government has also allowed some institutions-- specifically financial institutions to act independently from the government.

However, I did not read Snow Crash months ago, I read it now when the government is seeing the consequences that have arisen from letting financial institutions from having such independence.  As the government realizes that the current financial crisis was caused by its own action it shows that the government plays a vital role in the public’s well being.  The public cannot be dependent on private institutions as the public is in Snow Crash.