Connection Webs

If I had to choose the single most important thing that I learned this year, I think the connection webs can best summarize it. Beyond the factual connections, the connection webs that we constructed at various points throughout the year and on both of our finals encouraged us to look for patterns throughout history. By creating these connections between ostensibly unrelated historical events, I found that history does repeat itself. Similarly, in the extremism essay, I synthesized knowledge of various extremist groups and interpreted the factors that allowed them to become so popular, finding that each of the distinct events were spurred on by equally miserable circumstances. Also, what's that other word we mentioned this year? Nationalism, maybe? The idea of finding connections throughout history is useful in explaining why our world has become the way it is today, but the most compelling part is that this knowledge can be used to relate our understanding of common historical themes to the modern world and current events so that we can influence the shape of the future.