Nicole Kazakov - Reflection 2

Nicole Kazakov

November 14th, 2022 

Blog 2: Second Reflection

Group 3:

When I first started this class, one of the things I was mostly excited for is to expand my knowledge and to improve my skills with presenting and public speaking. This second reflection is going to be about the presentations have been presented by all groups in this SPC 2608 course. For this informative project we've been assigned to do, my group spoke about gun laws for 12 different countries -   countries like USA, Poland, Russia, Canada, Switzerland, etc. The 2 other groups spoke about topics such as COVID-19, immigration, and human trafficking. Being the first group to present we had to start off the presentations off strong and made sure to be informative and direct. I chose to talk and present about the gun laws in Poland. When it came to the gun laws in Poland, I did a summarization of all the information that I researched to keep it nice, informative, and short, yet simple. My goal was to say all of the information that is needed to be said and known in a short amount of time, but in a knowledgeable and informative manner. During my presentation, a few examples of what I went through and spoke about was the history of gun law's in Poland, the current law's in Poland, The Nazi-Soviet occupation, rules for carrying firearms, showed an image of a firearm permit from 1922, and a graph that shows active permits in Poland by year.

One of the reasons/points of having gun laws is because of a contentious issue - gun control/the control of guns. Although guns can be used for safety and some jobs require it, it is also a dangerous weapon if not used for the proper reasons. Gun laws are made to keep people safe and protected from any harm. In total, my group had 12 people and out of the 12 people presenting, three countries whose gun laws caught my eye the most was the United States, Canada,Switzerland and Japan. My group member Yadira Somoza chose to present about the gun laws in Japan, and she stated that the country does not see more than 10 gun deaths a year, that it is very rare. That statement absolutely shocked me. I also learned that Canada has a very strict gun control policy. Another informative fact/statement that shocked me that was presented by Vladislava Nekrasov, is the fact that it has been over 20 years since the last mass shooting. Switzerland's low crime rate definitely caught my eye and got me very interested in what the difference is between other countries. I was also shocked to hear that in Switzerland people are less likely to become criminals because of how their equal rights work, and how stated in my group member, Vladislava Nekrasov's, presentation, "Higher level of education helps reduce criminal activity". Switzerland also has a lower crime rate than in the U.S. but that is a whole different topic and story. Overall, I learned an incredible amount about the gun laws in countries around the world after each and every wonderful presentation.

Group 2: 

The topic that the group member's of group 2 went over was about immigrants and the struggles that they face daily while coming into America. Some people have to understand that immigrants are not just people moving to the United States for no reason, but they are moving to the States for a better life. And in order to move to America in the first place, immigrants have to leave their original homes and rebuild everything from fresh, and start all over again in a new country. A reason that most immigrants leave their original countries in the first place is because of the lack of job opportunities to grow, not having good access to education, political problems, and even discrimination. Leaving your home country isn't as easy as it sounds, it takes a lot for a person to do that and they face a lot of issues when trying to move. It is not the easiest task to do and takes a lot of work and patience to move to the U.S. On top of moving to a new country, immigrants must learn a new language, English, as well. Listening to this group's presentation made me realize how a lot of our parents had to do the same thing, pack their bags and move to a new country without knowing any word of the English language, not knowing where to go and where/how to start. For example, my parent's moved from their home country, Kyrgyzstan, to the United States of America, for me to be an American born citizen. I am extremely grateful, thankful, and appreciative for that. Group 2 did a great job on presenting this topic to the class/audience. Overall, this presentation was a reminder of how we should not take being American citizens for granted, and take action while we can, such as educational/career purposes. 

Group 1:

Group 1's topic was about COVID-19. Because of COVID-19, the world has to face many issues and affected a lot of things that caused many new changes that the world had to get used to for quite some time. For example, due to the global pandemic, school's all around the world had to switch to virtual/online learning compared to being and learning at school in person - I was one of those student's. I had to spend half of my junior year, and all of my senior year of high school online. Learning online is not the same experience a student would get compared to learning in person. Although waking up for school in your pajamas does sound nice since it was allowed, there was one big downside to that - the high school experience. The social aspect of it just was not the same either. Aside from online learning, a lot of people had to switch from working in person to working at home. And unfortunately, some people lost their jobs to COVID-19 because of the global pandemic. Although it caused many changes, I am very thankful for things to have gotten back to normal in the world and in a way was a wake-up call for us people to be more thankful and appreciative of everything, even the little things. Group 1 did a great job presenting every piece of information.

In conclusion, all group's did an amazing job and I loved each and every presentation! I learned a lot of new facts and information and can definitely make use of this new knowledge! I enjoyed watching and presenting very much and cannot wait to do more!