Assignment 4B: REFLECTION 1

REFLECTION
Choose any 1 classmate of project 3 that wrote about your same topic in any one component (a World Cities, b Beaches, c Inland Areas) and briefly compare/contrast their choices using the following format in a blog post:

1. Who is your classmate, what is the component category, what is the name of the choice?
My classmate Rebekah and I both chose the city of Redding as a comparison to other inland cities for project component 3c: Inland Areas.
http://rebekah89.blogspot.com/2008/10/3c-inland-areas.html

2. What is something similar this classmate said about the choice?
In both of our blogs, we mention the assumption that Redding is a large town. We also note that Redding resides along the Sacramento River and is known for its Christian schools, Redding Adventist Academy, Shasta Bible, and Simpson College. The other inland cities we chose to compare Redding to in the assignment are located in San Joaquin County and these cities were well known for its agriculture.

3. What is something different this classmate said about the choice?
In Rebekah's blog she mentioned that people assume Redding residents are mostly Republican and when the town was compared to a big city, L.A. was used whereas I used the assumption that Redding was a more rural, conservative town known for its previous lumber industry.

4. How would you relate this to Freire's ideas regarding dialogue? For example, you went in thinking one idea, your classmate had a different idea. What new idea emerged from this process?
Freire emphasized the need to interact with each other to discuss our ideas and share our opinions enabling us to learn from each other and that is what we did with this reflection assignment. First we had to read our classmates' blog to find one that wrote about the same topic as we did in our own blog, which gave me a lot of insight on different ideas. It took me quite awhile to find a classmate with similar focal points because when I did previous blogs I wanted to really expand my learning and think "outside the box" so to speak. Rebekah and I found a few similarities and differences in our study of Redding. I focused mainly on the natural beauty of the town such as noting the Lassen Volcanic National Park, the Burney Waterfalls, and most famously, Mount Shasta, and Lake Shasta. I chose to focus on those characteristics because its hard to find a town these days that still retains some of its originality and hasn't been overrun by large strip malls & new condos. My blog was similar to Rebekah's in that we both wrote about many of the same ideas including its land size, location, conservative culture religiously and politically. She mentioned Redding's recent rumblings about becoming an independent state naming it Jefferson which I didn't include in my blog. I enjoyed reading her blog because I learned a couple facts I didn't find or learn from my own research and I think that's what makes it interesting because it's intriguing to see what people can come up with when given one main idea as a focal point.