I have been writing in this blog as part of my social commitment class, too bad the semester ended so soon but nonetheless I will continue to update information in this forum.
Now the time has come where I have to ask myself, what have I learned these past days? What have I learned or what things do I do different now that I didn’t do before; let’s say at the beginning of the semester?
This few days I have learned that a lot of famous and some other no so famous people have done a lot of work toward building a better world. Now what is the main difference between them and normal people, why don’t people get involve? I have been asking myself this question for quite a few days now and I have come to the conclusion, the answer is “will”.
To have this power you must sincerely be convinced that you can do it and that nobody else can. Now this may sound a little selfish but the reality is that it can help you boost your self esteem and in fact no one can do things the way you do, so you could help build a better future in your own way but with the collaboration of other people.
You could further improve this mentality if you try to find out positive things about doing such things. For example, if you do community service; going from school to school teaching kids about the environment and the important role they play in order to improve our ecosystem. At the top of my mind I can think of four benefits from it. First and probably the most important, you help the environment and inspire people to do the same. Second, you learn effective ways to teach and transmit messages in an easy and understandable way. Third, you meet more people and probably have a better chance to get hire since you did all this things. Four, it is surely more fun that watching TV and doing nothing plus it enhances your conversation topics. I’m sure that you (the reader) can think of many more examples ^_^
As far as school goes,
In the past few days I did the Johari’s Window. I haven’t have school since the new influenza virus H1N1 arrived but I did the activity and I definitely learned some things that I didn’t know about myself. I hope that we can share this material when we return but either way it helped me a lot. I truly appreciate the help of everyone that helped me build this window.
Now, h
ow much have I changed during this semester?I think that at this moment I am more positive about the world than I ever was before. I used to think that I couldn’t do something to help because I felt insignificant compare to those billions of people out there in the world. I also thought that the responsibility belonged to the government of each nation. At the end of this semester I must say that my way to look at the world has changed to a more positive one, thus these past days I’m watching more news, trying to get knowledge from it, and if I can, trying to find a possible cause and a possible solution to a given problem, just like math isn’t it?
I think that our daily life also influences other people, so why not, let’s all be positive and help other people and do community service because no matter how small is your help, you never know what impact it would have. Also as I mention earlier, all good action will turn into something good, therefore we must all help build a better world.
As far as the class goes,
Throughout the course, I think that the most significant thing was its activities and all the thinking after that. Most of those activities were game activities although there was a reading of positive change that I really liked too. Why do I think that these activities are really essential? Well, first of all, I think it is a very unique, fun and great technique to learn how the society works so we can take a few steps back and look at ourselves working to accomplish something. The most important thing was not only to have these great activities, but it was also important to think what would we have done differently if we knew the porpoise of the game or why did we act the way we did. The discussion at the end really helped too.
Another significant aspect about the course was its videos because some videos gave us a kind of indirect experience thus acknowledging the help of so many people who are trying to change the world. At the top of my head I remember Ryan’s Well, the eleventh hour and Live8.
At last but not least, I think that doing a blog is really great because it provide us with tools and a channel where we can express ourselves and look back at what we have written. Also, by evaluating other people’s blogs, I have found out more interesting perspectives and ideas that people have thus I hope that this blog also helps someone to get a new perspective of life or helping him/her get involve into making positive changes.
Now, if I was asked, what would I change to make the course better?
First of all I must say that this has been my best humanistic course that I have taken since college. I think the methodology is very good but there are two minor changes that I would have liked. In the former I would have liked to have less homework after spring break because I felt that there was too much work to do and in the latter I would have liked that after and activity we would have thought about it and then discuss it. By thinking about the activity first, I think it would be easier for us to express what we feel.
