1st Quarter Reflections

          Throughout this quarter my class has had multiple discussions on slavery, Old West, Civil war and any more. But i have learned the most information this quarter on slavery and the old west. these topics have been very interesting to learn about because it was our past and that has a significant impact on our world now.  Learning about these topics blew my mind who would've known that what we believe a cowboy is now was never what it was back then. Cowboys were known as a symbol of nature and violence, the superior. Now we think of cowboys as dudes riding horses and getting into fights all day, completely opposites. I also was surprised that most southern states owned slaves, and that the population of those states are much less then any other state in the country. Owning a slave back then was awful and the way they abused them was just cruel, When we watched 12 years a slave it made my heart race and not in the good way, i could not believe what these owners had done to their "property." The whipping, the screaming, and the sadness was just hard to watch. towards the beginning of the year we discussed the topic of empathy and sympathy , it wasn't too long after that that we had to relate empathy to every discussion we had and to every topic that was announced, it was very interesting to see that you could relate yourself to an awful situation such as war, you empathize for those soldiers even though you don't like all the killing they're doing but yet you know that what they are doing is right and its for a good cause.
            This quarter i have learned an incredible amount of information, and that usually is not normal for me. last year in history we would go over a topic and i would forget what we discussed not even 30 minutes later, but this year i have learned a bunch and i mean a bunch of information. this quarter i think i have grown as a thinker because i always have something to say after every topic and i hope that i grow to become a great learner of history! really just someone that can know what they're talking about instead of just blabbering about random facts. We have not done many huge assignment but we did recently have an essay and i didn't do too shabby. i got an 88% and i believe that was one of my areas of strength! i hope that throughout the rest of the year we can learn about different religions in the United states because as a Jew i know a lot about my religion but not as much as other peoples, except Christianity, i know a lot about that religion, but i think it would be interesting if we learned about Hindu, Indian, and more!