Throughout this project, I have tried as much as I could to keep up with the rest of my group; however, I’m not sure that I’ve ever truly given someone else help to facilitate our group’s efforts in completing this project.  Most of the time I preferred to work mostly solo, putting together my part of the project without consulting others much, though I did get together with my NGO counterpart, since my role was in the corporation in social welfare, to more effectively organize my points for my paper and, more significantly, the presentation.  When we collaborated, we made sure to match up our points in order that they would refute each other more effectively, as in specific issues such as cell phones.  Doing so brought more purpose to my points and made them clearer for presenting.  This instance of working with my NGO partner was the only significant example of me working closely with my group, since we were all explicitly told to do such a step.  I did, however, communicate at times with the people in my group to determine more clearly what the final product of the presentation would be like, such as in the organization of the presentation and its appearance.  Thus, my slide in the presentation is similar to the other slides in how it is presented: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1JwQycmuEswVUdFzflmO n8xQ-0HgieHaiqcW1xZDi9kI/edit#slide=id.g11634f361_30.  Regarding the other aspects of the project, the country portfolio and the paper, I have also taken a similar approach in communicating with my group regarding clarification of certain aspects of the country portfolio.  At one point I did request help from Jack R. in finding a few missing pieces of information in my country portfolio.  In the end, though, I did most of the work on my own, since I felt that I had a good idea of what the final product was to look like: http://asiawatch.edublogs.org/mongolia/.  With my history paper, though, I have yet to complete it at this point, since I’ve been ill with pneumonia this past week, forcing me on some days to not work on the project at all.  At this point, however, I have developed a definite plan for the structure of the paper, thanks to the previous step of working with my NGO counterpart to give me a clearer idea of my final history paper.  Working with my group definitely gave me a much needed boost in knowing my direction.

    In detailing how we as global citizens deal with the globalization of our world, I believe that the short story “A Wife’s Story” offered some very clear and valuable insights to this question as opposed to the others.  Ever since her arrival in America to work in Special Ed, she has observed and noticed how America tends to treat outsiders.  As she has remarked, “First, you don’t exist. Then you’re invisible. Then you’re funny. Then you’re disgusting.” (page 26)  Through all these stages of an outsider’s reception by others, none of them truly encompass appreciation or respect.  Within this globalized world, one has to deal with coming into contact with strange outsiders from all over the world in one’s very own country; this forced attitude of complying with these outsiders may have given to instances of awkward and uncomfortable attitudes toward these outsiders, such as the stages described above.  Meanwhile, outsiders such as Panna, the title character of the story, are conversely forced to comply with this pervasive, disrespectful attitude from others, and may even learn and understand, with time, the world seen through the eyes of both her own people or group and of the “true” Americans.  As Panna commented, she felt that, despite her desire to consider herself of simply the Asian Indian group, she can relate to and understand the mind of the American salesmen who despise Indians for not buying, but at the same time comprehend the desire of the Indians to save and invest because of their shaky economic situation when first arriving in America.  Now that the people of the world are coming together and intermingling much more freely than ever before, people are also getting to know each other’s methods of and attitudes toward becoming successful in this globalized world.  Once people’s ways of life in this aspect come into contact, though, some disagreements result, since people have not had enough time yet to closely work together to bridge that gap between cultures.  The economic implications of globalization is an important part, but still one of several, of globalization, and “A Wife’s Story”, helps to put this point in perspective.  On a broader scale, an attitude of synthesizing the ways of life of different people from all over the world is the main message from the author of how globalization can be done successfully and effectively.

    While listening to the other presentations, I noticed how my American-Oceanian, European, African, and Middle-Eastern counterparts acting on the corporation’s behalf, as I was, in the aspect of social welfare addressed similar problems of contaminants in their products, and possibly mistreatment of customers.  However, in Africa’s presentation for the company De Beers for example, the company has donated millions to the community for education and families (http://www.slideshare.net/JoeScozzaro/sub-saharan-africa-globalization-proj2013), just as Samsung has donated millions to children, carrying the philosophy of how children are an integral part of society in the future, and how they are treated in any way is a guaranteed way to affect that future.  This issue of how children should be treated and how they should be growing up and learning is a goal of the Samsung group “Hope for Children”, which is in the above link about Samsung’s social welfare in the presentation in the first paragraph; however, Samsung has had the issue of being secretly entangled in child labor, as covered in the slide in our presentation regarding labor.  In addition, Samsung shares a problem of safety of its products with other corporations, such as Nestle; Nestle has had problems with contaminated baby formula.  How this was brought about was that the company forced the locals in Africa to buy the expensive product; thus, when the locals had to use up this new formula, contaminated water had to be used to dilute it before it was fed to the babies, and the formula led to deaths from malnutrition all around.  In conclusion, it was more of a customer abuse problem than a product problem, but the two types of problems were interconnected under social welfare abuse.  (http://www.slideshare.net/JoeScozzaro/europe-group-globalization-proj2013)  Likewise, Samsung has had problems in radiation coming from its phones, possibly raising the risk of cancer, especially for its frequent users.  Thus, corporations have had to address their problems of improving the quality of their products while also acknowledging the rights of their customers.  As for the presentations themselves,  the special preparedness of the presenters with their written out notes to accompany their presentations particularly impressed me, as they came off as much more prepared than others, who often glanced at their slides as I did.  Not only did presenters research their subjects in detail and gave the audience additional details besides the ones on the presentation slides, they projected their ideas in a professional way, definitely giving me inspiration for future presentations for global issues.

    This global project overall helped me to gain insight and knowledge into the workings of our globalizing world within various aspects as in its economy and actions for human rights as well.  It also helped me to understand how individual nations, no matter how diverse or outdated they may be, have still found ways to connect with the system of the globalized world.  For this first year, this project has helped me build a solid foundation for my understanding of the modern world, regarding the details of how the countries within it have adapted to each other’s systems and ways of becoming successful.  Rather than simply having a base knowledge of how the world’s nations work together and view each other, I now have a better comprehension of what countries have in common and how they use each other’s strengths.  After having covered all the different areas of the world, this project served to bring them all together and reveal to me in detail through my research how they truly work together today.  As a more developed global citizen, now I can see that countries are becoming less and less isolated and more and more aware of each other and interconnected in ideas and economies.  My appreciation for the rest of the world in contrast to simply my own corner of the world has significantly increased as I learned of how far-reaching yet powerful companies today can and have become, bringing the world even more closely together under the umbrella of these mega-companies.  With all these moves toward globalization and synthesis, though, I’ve also become more aware of how homogeneous the world is turning out to be.  In favor of turning into a whole network of global individuals working together to lift themselves up economically and politically, the world has endangered the unique cultures that people all over the world have taken many, many years to make, while this new global culture has developed and run them over relatively quickly.  Thus, after this first year in the Global program has culminated in this final project, I now have at least the basic skills in approaching the world with the mind of a concerned global citizen.