This summer bridge has provided me with the opportunity to learn more about topics I

have always been interested in and it also opened my eyes to things I had never even heard of.
For instance, I learned about Bacon’s rebellion and how important it was to the ways in which
the upper class would learn to mobilize and separate the lower classes and slaves from each other
as a way of decreasing the likelyhood of a revolt. I had already had some understanding of how
the separate classes worked and how the upper class controls a lot of the ways the other classes
function, but to learn more about how they feared the idea of a revolt and losing their status so
much so that they used things such as racism and hatred towards the British to steer the attention
away from themselves shocked me a lot. This class has made me a better critical thinker because
it has forced me to slow down and actually think about my thinking and the things I read/watch.
Most of the time I just fly by when I assume I know something, but while in this class I found
myself not being able to explain words that are a part of my regular vocabulary. It really made
me wonder how much I miss when I don’t take that time to dissect my words or the words I read.
This class has also strengthened my understanding of multicultural perspectives and has made
me more aware of the different intersectionalities of people of different races and cultures in the
past. I feel as if many of the views I had on race are more or less the same and if anything, I am
much more confident in the stance I take now after having discovered key pieces of evidence in
history in which America was not a democracy and oppressed various different races.
I understand the stress of taking a class that is meant to be months long in only four
weeks, so I can only imagine how hard it must have been to teach said class. For that I am very
impressed. However, if I were to teach this class, one thing I think I would do differently would
be the spacing of work and the way it is presented on Canvas. I myself am not the best with
technology, however the way the assignments were separated by modules instead of when things
were due/presented in class made it very difficult to figure out what was due a lot of the time. I
would find assignments that did not show up in the grades tab but were meant to have been done
buried in a module we had not even reached yet. We would also have many assignments due on
the same day but then nothing due for the next two days, which made it very stressful to space
out our workload. It was not impossible to navigate, but personally I feel as though it could have
been laid out differently or in a more straightforward way that would allow for me to follow the
weeks and assignments in order. The classes were also very long, which wasn’t much of a
problem, however I would have liked to talk more about ethnic studies and a bit less about the
build up to it.
For my vision statement I wrote that My goal in life is to be able to be a child
psychologist and aid in properly developing children's minds and to be the person who can be
there to take note of any mental health issues before they become an "issue". I would like to
think that I have taken a lot of mental steps towards that goal after having been in this class.