Time to Celebrate

I have a reason to celebrate! Not only is today my 19^th birthday, but it is also the final blog post of the semester, meaning that it is also the end of World Politics class. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that I am happy about the conclusion of our class – I will miss it in all it’s quirky and intimidating glory. Rather, I wish to celebrate my completion of a course in which I highly doubted my success. My initial reaction to our World Politics class, especially after reading the syllabus and hearing some of my fellow classmates regurgitate ancient and obscure world politics history, was of utter terror; I felt that my failure was inevitable. But look at me now! I made it through all of the confusing and complex debates, read text that I would have otherwise never touched, spoke my mind despite how simple my arguments may have sounded compared to others, and even learned a little! I must admit that I did not speak in class as much as I wish I had – but, someone would always end up saying what was on my mind in a more eloquent was than I could have, anyway. I look up to my fellow UC-ers. Throughout the entirety of the semester my respect for their seemingly endless cache of knowledge never ceased to amaze me. While many others entered the class already possessing the knowledge about IR theories, I did not, and I am proud to say that I now have a strong handle on such concepts. My experience in this class was entirely different than for other students, but was still just as valuable. Furthermore, this class was much more demanding and difficult for me than it was for others. In class I often found myself struggling to understand the context of an argument for it would be referring to some past event of which I had never heard. However, I learned to deal with this and power through my initial frustration. We still have one more final essay to complete and I have no idea what I am going to write about. You would think that spending an entire semester in a World Politics class would provide a specific answer to such a question as, “What is the most important issue in World Politics?” but, it has not. Rather, I am more confused than I was at the beginning of the class for I now know more about the subject and, therefore, have more conflicting ideas to sort out. Then again, I see this as a good thing because it means I actually conquered some of the material that, at first, seemed menacing. I congratulate myself and all my fellow floor and classmates for job well done =)