Metacognition

This year, in my AP World Hisotry course, I have learned to understand how things happen and how things change, how human intentions matter, but also how their consequences are shaped by the means of carrying them out, in a tangle of purpose and process. Ms. Borchers has taught me, as well as the rest of my class, to understand the trends of human nature and the patterns of the existence of civilizations. I have learned to comprehend the interplay of change and continuity, and avoid assuming that either is somehow more natural, or more to be expected, than the other. Ms. Borchers has aided me in my attempts to interpret different civilizations, which in turn have shown me the vast similarities between the emergence, existence, and extinction of different civilizations and peoples. Ms. Borchers' teaching has helped me strengthen my skills in my study of history, and I have matured and grown in skill and intelligence as a history student. Despite all of the knowledge and skill I have acquired this year, I still have much room for improvement, and next year in my AP U.S. History course next year I hope to improve on perceiving past events and issues as they were experienced by people at the time, to develop historical empathy as opposed to present-mindedness. I think this skill is a hard one to undertake, because it is so easy, and almost natural, to have a biased opinion of present-mindedness and the "superior" modern world compared to the "inferior, less-advanced" past. I have learned more than I ever thought I would this year in my AP World History Class, and I truly enjoyed every minute of the course.