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1.      Social Studies had the biggest influence on the way I think politically.  While in Social Studies last year, I spent my time supporting President Obama, and disapproving of the war with Iraq. Although after finishing Social Studies that year I thought, well wait, didn’t we fight getting this country? We fought for the freedoms that we take for granted today. Now wouldn’t it make sense that we use our freedoms to fight for another country’s same freedom? So I thought about it and starting finding myself more pro-war than I ever imagined myself being. The more pro-war I became the more the Obama Administration started talking about pulling our troops out of Iraq. Which they said in the beginning but it was a political campaign; anything gets said during those speeches, right? Wrong. I do feel that we have accomplished something overseas but just not enough for us to get up and leave within the year. I would like to see President Obama put more of our troops into Afghanistan and resolve the issue of us losing four-ground in that territory. This all comes back to Social Studies in my eyes, if we had never fought the war with England, which we learned about last year, in the first place we would not enjoy the freedoms that we do today. So in a way Social Studies completely changed my view on the wars we engage in and the people who currently run our country.

2.      Mainly, Social Studies changed my view on politics; however, it also showed me the importance of staying up on current events. Upon realizing my position on the Iraq war I started craving more information concerning it, so I could support my position more forcefully, thus I turned to the news. In the process of reading the news I was exposed to several new subjects and points of view involving the war. One that surprised me the most that only 4,416 troops have died in Iraq over the past 7 years. Now that’s not to say that that’s little or that it should be ignored but over the course of the 4 years that the US was involved in World War Two over 416,800 soldiers died. That means that WWII lasted 3 years less and claimed roughly 95 American lives to everyone that died in the Iraqi war. Now I understand that in WWII many more countries and people were involved yet I would have thought that with all the advancements in technology and weaponry alone the circumstances would have been leveled out.

3.      Overall Social Studies has opened my eyes to the fact that the news really can portray many different facts and thoughts that otherwise people would have not learned. And that alone shows the importance of Social Studies and the core idea that it portrays to me, there is always more than meets the eye.