Sandra's Blog

     Learning about the Millerite movement revealed the heartbreaking consequences of putting all of your trust in someone and being let down. The followers of this movement truly believed William Miller when he told them that Christ’s second coming would take place on October 22, 1844. When Christ did not come on this date, many people were left homeless and disappointed. I can’t imagine the pain and betrayal that these people felt when they realized that they had been fooled.      William Miller was able to gain immense support by using the Bible and lengthy calculations to convince others that the date he selected was correct. I think that people believed him because the way he explained his process used methods that people were familiar with. A lot of his evidence came from the Bible. During this time period, people were extremely religious, meaning that if the origin of this date could be traced to the Bible, they were likely to trust it. Unfortunately...

  I found these articles to be intriguing because although the werewolf is presented in many different films and stories, I had never questioned its origins. It is shocking that the legend of the werewolf is over 4,000 years old. Similar to the Salem Witch Trials and the witch trials that took place across Europe, I think the terror surrounding werewolves was so easily accepted because there were people who claimed it happened to them. For example, Burgot and Verdun claimed that they turned into wolves and committed atrocious acts. Their confessions, paired with the age of the folklore, could have come together to make the stories believable at the time. The werewolf has become such a familiar figure that it is interesting to consider how legends like this can seem true when there is enough “proof.”      After reading these articles, I was most surprised to learn that over 30,000 people were executed in werewolf trials. This number baffled me, and I’m confused as t...

     Out of all the films that we’ve watched so far, The Wave has been my favorite because it opened my eyes to a possibility that I had never considered before. Sophie and Styrling started the class by asking the question, “Do you think something like Hitler’s regime could happen again today?” I didn’t raise my hand because, before watching this film, it wasn’t a possibility in my mind. However, after seeing the film, I now see that not only is it possible, but it can happen surprisingly easily. The key is that the movement gets slowly built up over time, so most of the people involved don’t realize how far it has gone. The film begins with a class on anarchy and one on autocracy. In the autocracy class, the teacher immediately begins to build uniformity among his students; he tells them to dress the same and mixes up friend groups, so that everyone feels equal in the class. While watching, I found myself wondering why some students were trying to go against the norm. ...

  Ashley and I chose to present on the Salem Witch Trials because it is a topic that interests both of us. However, after mastering the subject for class, I realized that I actually didn’t know much about the trials at all. Although they took place over 300 years ago, I was especially surprised at the connections that could be drawn between the trials and current events today. We started our hunt for information with the first accusations, but we soon realized that the causes went further back. The first accusations were made by two young girls, who accused three women, including Tituba, an enslaved woman in their household. After being pressured, Tituba confessed to practicing witchcraft and claimed the devil had helped her. This led to a string of confessions and accusations throughout the town. Something that struck me was the social status of the accusers versus the accused. The accusers were usually young girls, with two of the earliest being only 9 and 11 years old. The acc...

     I’ll never forget receiving the email that I was needed as a “cybercriminal” for class that day. I was filled with a mix of excitement and dread at the thought of having to con one of my classmates. However, after learning about scams over the past couple of weeks, I was thrilled to be able to put my skills to the test. When I walked into class to receive my task, I immediately got to work, devising a plan to find out one of my group members’ mother’s maiden name. I thought this would be a breeze; unfortunately, I was mistaken. Although I had already spent an hour before class coming up with fun ways I could collect information from my peers, I found myself at a roadblock when it was time to actually carry out the task at hand.  My first tactic was to try to use the assignment to elicit the information. We were creating our own scams, and my group decided to make fake parking tickets. Hypothetically, we would print fake parking tickets that looked identical to...

Watching Paper Moon in class was the first time I realized that this course was not what I expected it to be. I had expected to look at scams, but I didn’t realize that it would be a puzzle to find the scam in the films we watched and the topics we learned about. Originally, I had pictured all scams as inherently wrong. However, watching young (and now motherless) Addie run around with Moze selling Bibles gave me a new perspective.  I was first surprised by how clever the scam truly was; it took effort to track down women in these specific circumstances. It also took a certain cunning on Addie’s part to determine just how much could be collected from each family. For example, she knew that the wealthy woman would be willing to pay over $20 even though they normally asked for $8. It was hard for me to decipher whether this scam could ever be justified because some of the money earned was going to Addie, who was left with nothing after her mother died. At the same time, the scam invo...