Reflection #1-

My Favorite Assignment This Far

So far, the assignment that I enjoyed the most was interpreting the journal entries of

Christopher Columbus as he made his voyage from Spain to his unintended destination of the

Carribean Islands. By reading Columbus's entries and doing extra research to interpret his prime

objectives for the journey, I was able to gain a full understanding of the actual happenings that

took place during his voyage in 1492; from his miscalculations of the Earth's circumference to

the actual purpose of his voyage. I was very satisfied with the information that I gathered from

studying this historical event, but there is room for improvement. The changes that I would

consider to improve how I interpreted the documents would be my methods of research. To

answer each question that was given for the assignment, the information was primarily pulled

from the entries given by Columbus himself. In order to interpret some of the events that took

place and the reasons for them, I turned to sources that could be located on the internet; in this

case, I utilize the Smithsonian Magazine. What I would do differently is take the time to

investigate other secondary sources. I did not utilize the textbook provided by the course because

of the scattered information. Also, most of the information given by the textbook did not satisfy

the inquiries in which I was pursuing to answer. When looking back, I could have used the

textbook as a reference for the common information that is already well known about

Columbus's voyage. The videos that were provided by John Green could have also become a

good reference for some of the more complicated information. Overall, I could have incorporated

that other sources available to use, instead of using the only two sources from the Smithsonian

Magazine and the Columbus journal entries itself.