Final Reflection

I want to start off by stating that I, surprisingly, enjoyed this course a lot. The title Destination Disease kind of threw me off in the beginning; I wasn’t quite sure if I was going to be able to get into the groove of the course, but I did. I am happy that I picked this course up at the last minute and stuck through it. One of the main themes that really stood out to me during this course was the vector-borne pathogens. This theme/topic was an eye opener for me because I wasn’t aware of how many different diseases are really out there. Vector-borne, though, freaks me out. For example, a lot of the diseases are transmitted just through the bite of a tiny little mosquito. I love traveling and I love being in the outdoors, therefor I could be exposed to so many diseases and I would have never been really aware if it weren’t for this course. Onchocerciasis (River Blindness) was really interesting to me. You can get such a traumatic disease just from being unlucky and getting bitten by a fly. The symptoms for this disease included lumps, aches, and even blindness. It’s also very scary in my opinion. Before this class, I wasn’t really aware of how many diseases are actually out there in the world. I’ve learned many different preventions throughout this course, though. For example, I am now more knowledgeable about vaccinations. There’s also precautions to take before you get infected such as only drinking enclosed water bottles, washing your hands, not drinking/eating after others, etc. I also wasn’t aware of how many people are affected by all of these diseases. There are way more fatalities than I thought.

Personally, I wasn’t really challenged in making my eportfolio. This is now my fifth eportfolio assignment that I have had to complete in college, so I’ve kind of gotten the hang of things by now. I don’t personally think that WordPress is a very user-friendly website, but it gets the job done. The peer review process helped me out a lot. Receiving the feedback of my classmates was very insightful because they always saw improvements that I did not notice. Adding others’ feedback and ideas into my site allowed it to have more detail and information, which made it way better in my opinion. This eportfolio shows that I can strategically organize materials and information into a pleasing, interesting format that intrigues my readers.

The skills that I acquired in this course will definitely help me in other classes going forward. First, being able to successfully research and gather information on a topic will help me in all areas of life and business after college. Also, a lot of people aren’t super tech-savvy, so the fact that I know how to set up a website, add useful information, and publish it for the world to enjoy is a pretty handy skill to have if you ask me. Lastly, having knowledge on all of the diseases that I could potentially get when traveling to another country will help me out a huge deal and will allow me to take proper precautions before I leave.

Overall, I actually really enjoyed this class. I learned a ton of useful information that I can use in my daily life. I will continue to research different diseases in countries that I plan on visiting.