Reflection

This past semester, and year as a whole, has been quite the journey. Looking back, I learned time management above all else in balancing home life, school, my job, my different friend groups, and other responsibilities. As the school year comes to a close, it now dawns on me that I am (hopefully) almost halfway done with my college experience at Dickinson. It feels like yesterday when I first stepped on campus in August of 2019, and I know the past two years have caused me to grow and mature in ways I never thought.

Specific to this class, I have learned how little I really know, and how little I will ever know. MENA is such a complicated and diverse region that it is impossible to fully grasp why it is the way that it is. Even so, the concepts and levels of analysis that I’ve learned to apply in this class help break down actions of states and non-state actors in the region to help better understand the motives and goals. In the future, I hope to travel next semester to Jordan, in order to become more well-versed in both the Arabic language and the culture of a small part of the Middle East.

I also became a much stronger writer, as well as a more creative one. Being an IS major, most of my writing is through essays and memorandums, hardly anything outside of this. This blog has provided me a way to experiment with different writing styles, from short blurbs to info-graphs. I hope to continue this in the future, as to not have tunnel vision with a singular approach to writing.