For my second project for humanities I learned about the Cold War. Actually I was in a group with Trevor and Max but we each chose a different war that had made an impact on the US. But before we had decided what war we wanted to do we had to come up with some sort of project. At first we were thinking of working all together and doing two, three week projects. One project that we thought about were making some sort of diorama of the war lay-out and the positions of the armies. After discussing what we thought we ended up just each choosing a war that we were interested in, Max getting World War II, Trevor getting World War I and I got the Cold War. After we each got our wars we decided that we would go with the basic essay and documentary.
For our essays we tried to incorporate a good amount of everything that went on. I know for me it was quite difficult because the Cold War was a span of about forty-five and many different events went on. But for the essays we each tried to put in how the war started, why the US got involved, what the different countries that were involved in the war fighting for, the people that played important roles, the big mistakes that different countries made, the turning points and the weapons and vehicles that were used. The first thing that I noticed was that in the Cold War there wasn’t really any violence so that meant that there wouldn’t really be a segment with weapons and a slim part for vehicles. But I just decided that I would try and make up for it by writing more in each different segments. I problem that I found for writing the essay was that many different sites had a lot of information. A fact that I had trouble confirming was the end of the actual war. Why it was so difficult was because almost all the sites had different dates but reasons. So really I just chose the one where I thought that the war would have been over. Even though this was a difficult part the rest of it was easy except for actually understanding the war.
What is so difficult for me about understanding the actual war is because the Cold War was all about government and politics, that right there is pretty much my weak spot. When I was younger I always thought that the Cold War was just some war that was fought in the snow between Russia and the US and had no idea that it had the Nuclear Arms Race and a lot of politics attached to it. I sort of knew this when I chose to take on the Cold War and sort of for that reason. I almost wanted the challenge and knew that I would learn a lot rather than studying World War II. Not that I wouldn’t learn a lot from studying that war just learning something new and interesting seemed like a good idea.
Although the project turned out very nice in the end, there were some points were I was quite concerned that things wouldn’t turn out very well. The reason for that was because after working for a few weeks on research Max asked me how I was doing on my essay, I replied that I hadn’t started and that I was still doing my research. This was sort of a problem because I only had like, three weeks to write a whole essay and to make a documentary. So right after that day I decided that I had enough information and that I would just research everything as I went along. As I started going I caught up on how far I was into it and everything turned out fine. Another part that was sort of stressful was making the documentaries. On Friday, (the projects were due the Tuesday coming up) I hadn’t really started my documentary, whereas Trevor had pretty much already finished his and Max was about half done. I got in a few recordings on that day but then decided that I would work extremely hard on it over the weekend so that I would be done by Monday or at least have a only a tiny bit to due. The problem was that on Saturday I put it off and surfed the whole day. So on Sunday I told myself, “Tobin, you have to do this or you are screwed and you will have nobody to blame but yourself.” So what I did was when I got up on Sunday morning I ate breakfast got my computer locked myself in my closet and recorded the whole thing that morning. I worked on it for a total of four straight hours, 8:30 to 11:30. By the time it was finished I was satisfied and felt I had done a good job with finished the project but not with time management.
Even though the project went very well and was stressful just like all projects are I know that there were somethings that I forgot to incorporate. Just talking about it now I forgot to put in the biggest mistakes that the countries made and the turning points. Now that I think about it that is sort of a big part and it would have made the essay better. Another sort of event that my mom actually reminded me was sort of the Espionage that went on in the beginning of the Cold War and the spies that were going around in each country. I know that this was another big thing that I missed and now looking back could have improved the essay. Even though I did miss some vital information I now know that consulting a parent about something that was going on when they were alive is never really to bad of an idea and also always checking back on what you set out to do.
