This course was a pleasant surprise to me, as I have gained a much greater amount of knowledge than expected. Prior to this course, I have taken a handful of online courses and found that I typically breeze through them without actually retaining much information. Because of this, I am wary to take online classes because I hold this fear of wasting tuition money on a class that I was interested in but will not learn anything.

The blog and activity posts, as well as comments, kept me and my classmates engaged in the content in a way that helped me succeed. I also appreciated that along with the required readings, there were optional readings. As I mentioned in many of my posts, I have always loved learning about cultural differences across the globe, and so these optional readings were great for a person like me to skim through if I had the time and interest. 

This course has taught me to view the world with an unbiased lens. I have found that many of the cultural normalities that we are so accustomed to in the United States are found absurd in other countries, and vice versa. Therefore, it is important to study these outside cultures from various perspectives in order to truly understand the functions and dysfunctions of it. For example, much of my studies this semester have been focused on domestic abuse and violence within Colombian marriages. If I were to think about this from an American perspective, I would think, “why doesn’t she just divorce him?”, but I have learned that divorce is much more frowned upon in Colombia than in America, and women would rather take this maltreatment than have the reputation of a divorcee.  

The only thing that I found difficult in this class was the timeframe. Having two 700-word posts due a week proved to be somewhat exhausting, especially while taking another 3-credit course and working full time simultaneously. I suspect that this rushed schedule is due to the shortened time frame of a summer course, however. Another thing that I think might be nice would be having the option to comment on either a blog or activity post for the week. Sometimes I found more interest in the activity post prompts and would have liked to engage with other classmates on their thoughts for this post rather than the blog.