The seminar influenced my thinking about the PIA because I got to hear some other people's
rationale for choosing certain answers. Often, I wasn't sure about a certain answer, and hearing many
different opinions really helped me narrow some of the answers down. It helped me learn which
answers were the distractors and which were the right ones, because I was often in between two
answers. One thing that was said that I hadn't thought of before was during our discussion of the point
of view question to the "Poverty" poem, because I was stuck between two answers. The answer
choices were "People who are in poverty cannot escape it because of people who do not know what it
is like," and "Too many people who talk about poverty have not experienced it." I thought it was the
former at first because the poem mentioned a preacher praising someone else, but everyone who talked
about the latter made me see how that one could fit the question a little bit better.
The discussion about the question which asked for the generalization that FDR made in his
speech produced an opinion that I disagreed with. I think it was Camilla that said that "We face our
common difficulties" was too general. I disagreed with that because it was a generalization that was
supported immediately with specific examples. I thought that the other examples were a little too
specific. I agreed the most with what Ben said during the question about a belief of the poet in
"Poverty." He said that it could not be that there would be no crime if poverty didn't exist in the world
because the poem said "The cause of half the crime on Earth…" If I had the opportunity to say
anything else, I would have asked people to explain what they got for the question about what
"spectre" meant. I said that I had some trouble with that question but I really meant to ask people to
explain their reasoning for that question. I am pretty mad at myself for not explicitly asking that
question. That would be the one thing I could change if I could go back.
In the seminar, everybody helped each other out throughout the discussion, and I know that it
helped a lot of my peers, as well as myself. The questions that were more difficult generated some
great discussion, and I changed my answers on more than one occasion due to those discussions. The
points that several of my peers made are ones that I can use on the next PIA when I am stuck between
two or more answers, because a lot of times I fall for the distractor.
The things that need improvement are that people need to make sure that everyone has a
chance to speak and to not cut people off. Several times, I saw that someone wanted to say something
but they would be cut off by someone who had already spoken a lot. I also wanted to respond to
something someone said, but before I could do so, someone else would beat me to it and say exactly
what I was thinking. That could have been my fault, too, since I should have responded quicker. If
someone who generally doesn't speak as much has something to say, people who speak a lot should
defer to that person.
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