Something that I learned in this unit that I did not know before was the political activism that gripped the nation from the late 60s to early 70s. I had assumed that US citizens have always generally backed the country when we enter a war, as a common enemy has the general effect of uniting the people. This was the case in the American Revolution and both of the World Wars. However, in the case of the Vietnam War, I did not know that there was such a large part of the American population that opposed the US’s involvement. We specifically focused on student activism, which I believe was a good choice as it increased the material’s relevance to us as students ourselves. The theme of political activism for this unit was one that exposed me to the intricacies of the political environs during the Vietnam War and changed my understanding of the aims of the civil rights movement. It had never crossed my mind that apathy to the cause was such a great obstacle to overcome for civil rights leaders, but MLK’s words in his Beyond Vietnam speech conveyed that convincing people that inaction conflicted with his goals was a great burden to him. “A time comes when silence is betrayal”
While I feel that I learned everything that my professor expected of me in this unit I do have a couple questions regarding the anti-war movement opposing the Vietnam War. My central curiosity is to what degree these protests affected the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, if at all. Secondly I would have liked to learn more about the key civil rights leaders involved in the movement and what sparked the rapid activism in the 60s for social justice. Despite slavery’s abolishment taking place half a century prior, what was the catalyst for change from the 60s-70s that was not present in previous decades?
A main strength of my writing in this unit was the research that I did for the topic. While it could be argued that I was given the tools through the library session and some of my sources came from the class materials, regardless the sources I used for my paper were extremely relevant to my topic and useful in proving my claims. I am most proud of my use of comparisons across different people as evidence to show the similarities between them. If I were to revise my writing I would make sure the sentence structures were better as I rushed to complete the paper, and I might change the sequence of ideas, as I felt at the end that perhaps I should have said some things before others.
I would rate my engagement in the unit as very high as I completed all my assignments and put in a lot of effort in my responses, however participation in person was very low for me as I have trouble speaking publicly, despite having some things to say. Something that I did in this unit that helped me be successful was doing the readings so that I would understand what the professor was talking about. Besides understanding during class I also saw that the readings would directly improve my writing as I had more ideas to comment on and rhetorical devices to experiment with. In the last unit there was a greater emphasis on writing skills and understanding rhetoric, which I thought had a broader application on our lives in the future. This unit focused more on political history and the uses of rhetoric throughout it, and while it is important to show examples of how rhetoric has been applied with varying degrees of success in real-world situations, I would argue that these examples should be limited in their use; their purpose is showing students why they should learn about rhetoric. I think showing examples of rhetoric should be a resource used in every unit as opposed to just one.
I think that I performed worse in this unit as a student as I submitted a couple of assignments past their due date and I have not been able to improve much on my participation. However, I am satisfied that my writing has improved since the last unit thanks to the rhetorical devices we practice in the book and the exposure of information we get from class. I hope to progress steadily to achieve my goals as a writer.
