The End of the Road

Wow! Here we are and it’s week 12 in the Signature Series and that means it’s the end. I believe we were asked in the first week of the class to answer the question of why Bellevue University requires every student to complete the Series. I’m not really sure how I answered that question and at this point it is irrelevant. I’m sure my answer was based on a lack of information and understanding behind the purpose of the course. The idea behind the course is to make students aware of the many different situations that occur throughout the world. The idea of Western vision and American values obviously played a large part in this, but a number of ideas were presented during the course that were just as important. One assignment in particular comes to mind and that was in week 7 if I remember correctly. We were asked to write an essay on political reform in China and whether or not our American traditions and values would be valuable in helping to reshape their government. This was by no means an easy task, but I do appreciate the idea behind it because I think that while it’s important to understand American traditions and values, we have to remember that we can not force them upon unwilling participants. The system that works for us will not always work for someone else.

We covered a lot of different readings during the course of the last 12 weeks all of which you could argue were of equal importance. I’m not going to sit here and go through each one because that could literally take all day, but I do think that there is something to take from each one. The important thing about this though is that what I take from each story may not be the same as my fellow classmates. We were all free to interpret the readings in our own way and to take whatever meaning we wanted from them. And, to expand on that, we were free to express our interpretations in our own words for the matter of healthy debate. I think this creates a positive learning situation.

I hope that I was able to contribute in a positive manner throughout this class. I know I tried to always expand on the topics I chose to write about to the best of my ability. Not everyone may have always agreed with what it was I was saying, but I hope that what I had to say helped create positive discussions and to expand the topics under study. I cannot answer the question of whether or not the course was better because I was a student in it because I cannot answer on behalf of my classmates. However, I really do hope it was.

Josh