flat world project reflection.

1. What did you like best about the project and why?
I liked the fact that we got to compare and revise stories written by people in Korea and Colorado. By this i realized that we all think the same way, I thought their stories would be completely different and they would have a totally different way of thinking, but all the stories I read seemed to be something I could`ve written. This just goes to show that in the end, we all think the same way no matter where we live. I also enjoyed reading the stories about the kids from Korea who talked about the hard times that they suffered through during the Korean War. I was astonished by the things they wrote that they had to do to escape communism. It helped me learn about their culture and even though I learned all the facts about it in World Civ, it was completely different hearing it from a person`s point of view. It was as if someone real was telling me their story and that makes so much more of an impact on me then a textbook ever would.

2. What did you like least and why?
I didn`t like the stories that seemed to have no effort put into them. I saw many versions of a stories I already knew and they just seemed fake to me. I read a couple that were completely random and not interesting at all. They had no story line to them or anything. Those were the ones that dissapointed me because I felt like they weren`t putting enough effort into them which just caused me to do more work to give them A LOT of feedback which they needed.

3. What was something surprising that you learned about the other students (from other schools)?
Like I said in the first question, I loved reading about the experiences from the Korean War. It was depressing what they had to go through and tragedies they had to witness. The fact that it was told by someone actually living it made all the difference. I learned that all these experiences were real, they never have an impact on you unless you know someone who had gone through them and hear how hard they actually had it. One person talked about how they had to hold onto the top of the train and people wouldn`t hang on tight and fall off to their death when the train started moving. One person talked about how they had to sneak away from their home in the middle of the night to take a boat with other people also escaping their communist taken-over home.

4. How do you think the project affected your writing?
I got a lot of great feedback because the people giving it to me were extremely reliable and took the time to give me thoughtful feedback. I definitly learned what a reader was looking for and how to make it the most appealing to them.

5. Describe the most challenging aspect of the project.
Writing my paper was the hardest part. Deciding on a topic took me a while and once I had it written, I changed it completely to a different idea that worked better for me. Writing the first draft and thinking of a topic for my story was the hardest. Once we got into communicating with the various students in Colorado and Korea, it seemed to flow a lot better for me.

6. Offer some advice to future participants.
Choose a good topic and put some thought into it. Really put 100% of your effort into it to make it interesting for your editor/reader. If you don`t give it your all, then you`ll get a boring or bad story that no one wants to read and all the people giving you feedback will have to spend a lot of time telling you how to make it better. If you don`t choose a good topic from the first draft, then from then on it will just make you frustrated so choose a good topic, stick with it and make sure your happy with it.

7. Other comments.
this project was great. I wish i could`ve talked to some of the kids over skype and actually get a sense of who they really were. Most of the kids had great stories and by reading the stories you get a small sense of who they really are and that just makes the whole project all the better.