Final France blog reflection

Final blog reflection

This semester, I was given the opportunity to work with a group of my peers and research the relationship between the growing terrorist group ISIS and France while taking a closer look into the attacks on France committed by ISIS. Our first blog post was a general overview introducing our topic. In this post, we touched on the emergence of the terrorist group while highlighting the expressed negative views they had against France that contributed to the series of attacks. We also explained why these events are so important to understand and the relevance it has to the U.S. Our second blog post was focused on analyzing the events in French and Middle Eastern history that contributed to these series of attacks. We found that much of the animosity from the Middle East towards France is linked to a long history of French imperialism in the Middle East. Our last and most relevant topic we centered our third blog post around was France after these attacks. We covered how these terror attacks affected French legislation, military, and most importantly, the French Muslim community today.    

For every blog post, our method was to figure out every topic we would cover within that one post, and then pick what topic each person would research and write about. After spending about a week researching our topic, we would try to meet up in the library to share all the information that we found and put each of our pieces together to create a single post. We would then summarize our ideas and make transitional adjustments to make everyone’s work flow together as one cohesive piece. I believe our strategy was effective because it allowed us to produce detailed blog posts. The only complications we encountered through this method was trying to find a time for us all to meet. So when not all of us could meet, we would share our work on a shared document online and compose our blog in that way.

Through this assignment, I got to familiarize myself with a topic that I had always found interesting while also learning what it takes to be successful in long a long-term group assignment. When it came to my knowledge of the terror attacks in France, I only knew what I had seen on the news or social media. However, after gaining insight on the depth of Middle East and French relations and its history, I have an entirely new understanding of how and why these events occurred. I have also learned that when working a group for a long amount of time, communication, delegation, and knowing when to ask for help from your partners are key to producing a quality product. I believe this assignment has raised mine and my group member’s awareness of how terror attacks come about and the need to fight against islamophobia by constantly educating ourselves and others.