This is the second week, so far I have read “the Making of the Modern World” by Erik Ringmar and honestly I have only read roughly some parts of the other reading. I am talking about this because I want to talk about the current situation of long distance learning. Without a doubt, this whole system is very difficult for any normal student to learn or at least it has been for me. I am used to learning in a controlled environment with a teacher in front of me, so a sudden change to a habit that was formed as a kid for me is very difficult. Other than that, I have a few questions, that I hope I will learn or find out in the next couple of weeks.

In countries or states, where there are corrupt or no political institutions, who do the people look for assistance? The United Nations is too weak to assist any third world country with a corrupt government or weak economy. The U.S. just sends out money/weapons to these countries in hopes they solve their own problems. For example, Venezuela, the country itself is in anarchy. Everyone is out for themselves, people can’t even trust the authorities because they are corrupt. So my next question is this, in a world of anarchy, if anarchy allows anything from chaos to even order, will countries, whose economy is weak and the government is too weak, just collapse and wait for a wealthy country to take over?

After reading “Making of the Modern World” by Erik Ringmar, I wasn’t surprised by the fact that during the colonial centuries good relationships between neighboring states in Europe were little to non existent as all the states were power hungry. However, it was interesting to see the relationship between the colonies and it’s colonizer. During the colonial era, Europe was ruthless when it came to it’s relationship with the Americas, South America and the Caribbean. For example, the Spanish committed mass genocide and took over almost the whole continent in the South and even in the Caribbean islands. Native Indians were either killed, forced to work, raped, or even being sold for slavery. Ironically, these colonies rose to sovereignty despite being under control by states for several decades.

Another thing that was interesting to me, was the Treaty of Westphalia. This whole Westphalia system, was made after the Thirty Years’ War(1618-1648), where states came together and formed a treaty which gave a whole new approach to international relations between states. While the treaty made it clear that each state would be allowed to rule their territories as they saw fit, every state was equal and there was no overarching power, the effect of it was anarchy. Where there was a breakdown in order and law and everyone was for themselves. The states’ powers were decentralized meaning there was no main source of power to keep common rules in check. As a result, states had to form alliances or rely on their own resources against other rival states. This caused a lot of tension between the states which allowed many colonies like the ones in the Americas to gain sovereignty due to the fact that the states were too busy “watching” their own backs and lost control of their colonies.

With our first week of classes ending, going into the second week, I am struggling adapting to the whole online learning system. After this week, I have come to terms that I learn best when I am face to face with my professors. It’s a whole new feeling, for us students to have to do self learning with no immediate help. So far, all of my professors have been understanding and are taking things slow to get the students accustomed to a new system of long distance learning. I have a few classes with my friend so it makes it a little bit easier for me as we can discuss over the materials with each other.

Overall, the upcoming wednesday will be my second meeting with my professor and my group which I am excited for. Over the week, I have been looking over the syllabus and the class website to get a feeling of what is expected of me and what I need to do in order to pass the class. As this is a self grading class, I want to be on top of everything as I am pretty irresponsible which is something that I want to change. Lastly, to summarize I want to say that I am looking forward to seeing how everything will roll out. I understand my current blogs are very bland and lacking in details but next week I will be blogging about my readings and my opinions on whatever I learn.

In our first week, we discussed the guidelines and how the rest of the semester would work. After reading the syllabus, I learned that we would be meeting once a week which was something that I was not expecting. I had hoped we would meet more than once or at least for a longer time meeting. However, I am not as worried as I should be due to the fact that I am given the privilege to email the professor and set appointments whenever I am in need of assistance. Furthermore, a lot of our work will be self graded which is pretty interesting. Sadly, during our first meeting, the professor did not go over much about the class but I hope she will in our next meeting.

Another thing that we discussed about when we were going over the syllabus, was the adventures given to us. There were several activities and they each gave points after completion, which added up to 170 points and our goal was to reach 100 points. It’s a very interesting approach and I am excited about the way everything will turn out. Lastly, one thing that I am not so happy about is the idea of how the class is divided into groups and each group will direct the path in which we will learn. Our group has not communicated at all yet which is a scary sign. Overall, I hope everything turns out okay.