Course Reflection

Week 6: Course Reflection

I can’t believe the final week is here!  I have to admit I am slightly relieved and feel as though I can finally relax and start enjoying the summer.  I enjoyed all of the reading material this semester.  I found the first three articles we read: “The “Banking” Concept of Education”, “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work”, and “In the Basement of the Ivory Tower”, very interesting.  It was interesting to read about the different perceptions about education.  Although I knew that education differs between public and private schools, I did not realize how different education was among public schools in different districts.  The documentary film, The House I Live In, was a little depressing but very insightful.  It made me question things I never thought about before in regards to drug policies in America.  I always felt that people should do time for their crimes but I never really thought about how the judicial system creates more crime than preventing it.  I think it is insane that the U.S. government has spent over $1 trillion dollars on the War on Drugs in America over the last forty years, yet we are no better off than when we first started.  The reading I enjoyed the most was the book The Glass Castle.  I found it extremely fascinating and couldn’t put the book down.  I love reading true stories and I think Jeannette Walls did a great job telling her story of her dysfunctional childhood.  I also thought it was very inspiring in that Walls showed everyone that you can be successful no matter how you were raised or where you came from.   I found the papers we had to write for each reading assignment more challenging than I thought they would be.  It was helpful to be able to have our draft papers peer-reviewed and critiqued by others and then given a chance to revise our papers after receiving feedback.  In addition to the readings and papers this semester we had to write a blog every week.  At first it was a little intimidating to me because I had never done anything like that before.  It actually wasn’t too bad and I actually found it refreshing to write our personal views on the material or specific topics from the week’s assignments in a more informal format.  Overall the course provided a unique way of learning and thinking, however the course was very fast paced and it was easy to become overwhelmed with the workload.  It was nice to have a small size class for a change because I feel like I had more interaction with my classmates and my Professor.