Final Reflection
Life is all about taking challenges and trying your best. Towards the end of freshman year I began to think, I don’t want to take the easy way, I want to challenge myself. I also want to prepare my self as much as possible for the future. Therefore, I decided to enroll in this class. In this class, I learned the correct way of outlining an essay, how to look at and interpret documents, and to learn how to think more critically.
Essays are a big part of this course. So throughout the year we learned how to outline an essay. First, we learned to write a thesis statement. Before I took this class I did not know that a thesis statement contained so much information, and that it was so important. Mr. Rodriguez taught us that it is very important to address the entire prompt. To address the promt we have to point out the time period, and say what we are going to write about, according to what the prompt says. Then, we learned the rule of threes. I had difficulty applying this rule, it requires a lot of thinking and information.In this class we primarily wrote three types of essays Which are the compare and contrast, change over time, and the document based question.
Analyzing a document is more than just looking at it, and just saying what it says. I learned that the hard way. My Document Based Question essays were not always that good. I just restated what the document said. I guess it was hard for me to look at the documentand figure out everything that the document said. To understand what the document said of course you need to know history. This includes reading the textbook. By the end of the year I feel I have definetly improved on analyzing documents.
Sometimes we do not give history the importance we should give it. History is a very important subject. It shows us how we have improved as a society, but it also shows us our mistakes. And by showing us our mistakes we learn or try not to do it again. We learn why things are the way they are. It has everything to do with the past. It also opens up your mind to different way of thinkingg, ideas, and cultures.
In conclusion, I am definately glad I took this course. This class helped me outline essays correctly, analyze documents more accurately, and it helped me think more critically. Although, I do have some regets, such as not reading every single chapter, and not finishing some assignment on time. Finally, I would like to thank my teacher Mr. Rodriguez for always pushing us to do our best.
