Blog Post #4 – The KGB Museum of Russian Spies!

During the site visit I chose to visit a significant part of the Cold War, the USSR spy agency the KGB, Committee  for States security or in Russian  Комите́т Госуда́рственной Безопа́сности. It was established in March 13 1954 originally by Russia. Because Russia joined the Soviet Union the Soviets new spy agency was the KGB of Russia. 

I honestly consumed lots of information from the visit. Not only about spies but also about the USSR and their tyrant, Joseph Stalin. Although it wasn’t the most ideal for my topic, it was honestly still useful. There was actual artifacts such as the killer umbrella which had an attachment of a ‘gun’ in the umbrella so it made it hideous. It shot a poisonous ball that will sting you like a mosquito harmlessly, but after a few days you were supposed to get a high fever and die. That was what happened to Georgi Markov a anti – communism activist. Anyways I was shown some real life experiences such as chaining me up on a KGB torture chair, physically. I was also shown the agony of prisoners who were locked in a Russian museum.

Anyways, I was interested in the stuff they were talking about and it really captivating.

 

Blog post #3 – Interview

During our overall researching process, we had to use the tool of interviewing as a resource.  My interviewee was a 77 years old man named Ray Charles. I think I consumed a lot of information from him and I am definitely thankful to have someone to interview as good as him. Ray has been a veteran himself as well as a son of one.

During the interviewing session, I mostly got everything I was anticipating. Although he spoke one question for a long time I still was able to keep up with him with my notes. During the interview, Ray explained a lot and some background knowledge that helped me understand him better. Since Ray has been at a period of obsolete communication system he hasn’t been able to really been able to balance the time he spoke for each question. 

After a few days I interviewed another person from Yale University and who got a master in it. His name was Bob. He helped me with sub questions which were directly asked. Mostly, I got stuff from his perspective and all was good and stuff.

I hope I exceed the expectations!

 

Blog Post #2 – Questions

Now once we have a substantial topic we generated we have to make our main inquiry question which guides our research. Followed up the main inquiry was sub questions who later on helped answer our main inquiry question. To make the main inquiry question, we had to meet a criteria. In the next few paragraphs, I will tell you the troubles and difficulties I’ve faced during this process of research.

 

Now to making the criteria. The expectations were to make the main inquiry question we had to make them practical, answerable, cannot be a simple fact, cannot be already known and cannot be too personal. Now do you get my difficulties? Good. Now my own main inquiry question is how has the Cold War impacted the world in both a positive and a negative way? Now check the criteria. This whole process took a total of 5 days. Coming up with sub questions were easy first you need to explain what the thing is. Then you need to get the questions that diverted the questions into a bigger question which was mainly the hard part.

 

Questions I also considered was quite a variety of questions. For instance, I considered doing something on the arms race and stuff. But since most of them all met the criteria it was difficult to decide. But eventually, I got my sub questions and the main inquiry questions down and ready.

 

But overall, the experiences were fascinating and I like how things were going for Capstone.

Capstone Blog Post #1 – Choosing a topic

I was looking forward to doing a project that included research of your choice. But guess what, since this is my first year here I have been informed that we are doing a project that at least is similar to the idea and the project is called Capstone. The first part of the project was to find a topic that intrigued you and this is the reflection for it.

During this process, I had some challenges obviously, and they were finding the right topic that gave me a total of 6 weeks of research, which is 42 days. 42 DAYS. That if you ask me is a very very very long long long time to do one topic that will captivate you for a total of 6 weeks. The second challenge I faced was getting to know what this project generally was. Since this is my first year here, I had no idea what this Capstone project was. At first, I thought it was to cap a stone but I was wrong. Anyhow the only easy part I faced was I had an abundant amount of topic choices which made me satisfied.

To finalize this topic I had to fish out my best choice out of the 5 choices I preferred. Then I minimized it to 2 topic choices. Then debating between the two topics which were individually the Attacks of 911 and the Cold War. Debating between these two topics and decided on the Cold War.

Overall, I had a pleasant time finding something that interests me!