Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Assignment 1: Preview Reflection Blog Post: Growing Up

How can growing up be both exciting and painful?

Growing up is something that I think we do throughout our entire lifetime. I think there are so many things that we learn throughout different stages of life that helps us grow more as a person. There are some things that are exciting to learn and accomplish, but there are other things that can hurt you emotionally and sometimes physically. When we are young and learning to read, write, or even walk, we always find bumps in the way. Even though we may fall over and over again, practice makes perfect and we grow which is always exciting. The obstacles may be difficult and painful at times, but it is all the process of learning and growing. Sometimes we may learn things at a young age that maybe we should have learned later on which can also be painful. Betrayal is one of the most painful processes of growing up. When we are betrayed by anybody, it makes us grow up and learn that you cannot always trust just anyone. I think growing up is just a process of learning that we never end.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Assignment 6: Primary Source Document Reflection Post

Eyewitness account of the Boston Tea Party .

Whenever I thought about the Boston Tea Party, I imagined a bunch of people throwing a riot dressed up as Indians. In elementary school, we had a field trip to Boston Harbor where they have a ship with packages of tea and they would allow us to throw it into the harbor. The packs of course had ropes to pull them back up from the water and now I know that it probably was not real tea. But, they never really went into detail on how it happened. When I read the eyewitness account, I discovered that it was not a riot at all. The colonists had set in their minds what they wanted to get out of the event without causing any harm of any kind. I learned that they were actually pretty orderly and it was not chaos as I imagined. The fact that they were given instructions to specifically not harm the ships surprised me a lot. The colonists did not even try to get to know who participated with them in the event. Basically they just walked up to the ships, dumped the tea, and walked back to their homes. I was a little shocked though that some of the ones who participated in the act of rebellion were trying to take advantage of the situation and sneak some tea into their jackets. I think it was a great way to rebel with no violence.