Final Reflections

Sadly, we have come to our final week of classes, along with our last reflection post. I'll try to keep this final reflection short so that I don't get too nostalgic. Honestly, I feel torn between a sense of excitement or sadness. While I am happy to have almost completed the semester, I am going to miss having PTJ as our teacher. Teachers like him are the reason I came to American and why I'm even more excited to continue on my education in SIS. Having intellectual conversations about foreign policy and the theories behind them is all good and dandy. However, learning from a professor who can give substantive knowledge while also guiding your experience as a student on a personal level is of the most important to me. I will admit I was hesitant about World Politics before the semester started because I had gone to preview day and seen PTJ give a sample lecture. My whole life, I've only taken classes where teachers talk at you but never really engage with you. Learning to me was writing down whatever the Powerpoint or the teacher had said, but not really questioning or analyzing it further. Now, having taken World Politics for the past 14 weeks, I can whole-heartedly say that PTJ has changed my perspective on learning as a whole. I know genuinely recognize the advantages that can be gained from class debates or "fishbowls." Not to be overdramatic or anything, but there were moments when doing my World Politics homework that I had an epiphany. During the Subotic article, I finally felt like I had found the place where I supposed to be. I honestly have no clue why that piece resonated with me so much, but I'm glad that it did. Some of the pieces that we read were extremely well written and insightful but not all of them had the same emotional impact. Maybe this was the reason they impacted me so much, but nevertheless, I'm grateful for everything that we discussed within the past 15 weeks. That even includes Todorov, although at certain moments in The Conquest of America he dragged the point out. I'm grateful that this World Politics class was my introduction to the International Relations world and is now the basis on which I will further build my education and later career. While I'm sad to leave the environment that PTJ has created for us, I think its important to recognize that it isn't really the end. Just because we won't be in his class anymore doesn't mean that we can't discuss Disney or Star Wars anymore. I for one will be needing a full debrief on his thoughts on the Rise of Skywalker at the beginning of the Spring 2020 semester. With that said, I'm looking forward to our "final". Diplomatic Risk was by far one of the most chaotic classes we've had and I'm very much looking forward to seeing what happens next Thursday. Until then, I'll just work on our final essay and continue to look back over the past 14 weeks with happiness and a tiny bit of nostalgia.