Overall, I would have to say that this class has been one of
my favorites that I have taken at BGSU. Throughout the semester I learned so
much information and skills to help me along in my career. For me personally, I
really enjoyed the class discussions. If I didn’t understand something from the
readings, then almost all of the time it would become clear to me by the end of
class. The fact that the class was structured around discussions rather than a lecture
made the class much more interesting to go to and was something completely
different than what most of my other classes do. Since I am a visual learner, the
video clips that we were shown also helped me with a better understanding of
how serious of an issue something was or to actually get a chance to witness
something through footage.
This class taught me a lot of new skills that I hadn’t
always used before up until this class. For instance, a lot of times in this
class we would talk about how different races and types of people would get
discriminated against. This class has taught me to not only think about what
happened, but to also put myself in the shoes of the other person and try and
figure out how I would react to all of the different situations. An example of
this would have been towards the end of the semester when we talked a little
bit about the whole Mike Rice and Rutgers University incident. At first I found
myself acting like any fan and criticizing Rutgers University’s Athletic
Director on not firing Mike Rice when he first found out about the whole
situation in which he would verbally abuse his players and throw basketballs at
them. Then after a lot of thought, I started to think like the Athletic
Director would. After finding out that this was his first hire, it started to
hit me that he didn’t want to admit that he was wrong in hiring Mike Rice in
the first place and this incident probably wasn’t as bad as what it got too.
That is why he only decided to suspend him for 3 games. Even though he wasn’t
fired right away, I know if I was the Athletic Director as bad as it may sound,
I probably would have done the same thing. I hate when I have to admit I was
wrong, however I would have done it for more than 3 games. Lastly, another
article really enjoyed talking about was the ones on Michael Jordan because I
had no idea there was so many issues that surrounded him. I knew he was arguably
the greatest basketball player to play the game but all the other small things
that he had to continually deal with like the media, sponsors and endorsers. I
really had not known a lot about Michael Jordan coming into the class, even
though I grew up watching him in Chicago, so it was really interesting to see what
he went through and how he was able to cope and grow as person as well as an athlete.
Having to write blog entry’s each was actually really fun
and it wasn’t hard at all. I wish a lot more of my classes were like this. The
blogs really helped me see everyone’s mindset of the different issues that were
mentioned. While I also thought the blog posts did a good job of summarizing
the topics that we talked about each week. Every person who did a blog provided
more insight into certain topics and sometimes even gave their own feelings/views
on the issues as well. I liked how we were able to write comments on the
journals too. I helped me get a better or different perspective from someone in
the class that might have a different idea or thought on the subject. Also, you
could possibly continue a conversation with someone else that you might not
have been able to finish in class.
This class really expanded my horizons for future
knowledge and made me more aware of modern day issues within the field of
sport. Also, I will take away from this class to respect other people's
opinions and viewpoints. Even though I might have disagreed on some of other
people’s views, there is a right way and a wrong way to do so, and I certainly
think this class helped in teaching me that.
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