Countries & Collapse: Slovakia/Afghanistan Alsardary

For my project, click here ;)

         For my Q3 Benchmark, I selected Slovakia, which is located in Central Europe, and Afghanistan, which is located in Central Asia. They both are basically completely different countries that have many differences and some similarities in many ways. I basically rated the collapsibility of each country based on the five point framework from Jared Diamond's "Collapse". The five point framework is Environmental Damage, Society's response to environmental problems, Friendly trade partners, and hostile neighbors. The process was pretty interesting for me, especially the time. I spent most of my time researching whereas I should have started putting toghether the project. For the wordpress work, we put our country's sources under the five point framework and it made it easier for me to put toghether the project. One thing I do think I should have done is I should not have procrastinated alot. Most of the time I pushed the BM off thinking I had time to do it but it soon came time to finish it up and I had a bit of trouble with time management. I did put alot of effort and time into the BM though, spending hours doing research and developing the best responses and collapsibility ratings for my countries, going in deep detail and long explanation. I also spent a large amount of time trying to find photos to make the product look nice and creative. Overall, I think my project is put together well and has good information entailed in it. As for the 5 point framework, doing the research was definitely the hardest part of all, especially because you needed the research to develop a true statement. Other than that, I think the 5 point framework was relatively easy to deal with and I think I had the necessary tools to assess the five point framework for my countries in my own mind. It was pretty straightforward, it just needed the time and thinking and that is exactly what I spent time doing and perfecting.  If I could change one thing about my product, it would probably be the design or the format, because I feel like I could have taken it to another level with creativity; nevertheless, I think I did a great job overall. I would also try to take back time and start the project earlier while doing the research so that i could multitask and get more done. I think this was a fantastic BM that really tested my ability to assess my countries and really learn a deeper understanding of the possible things that might make a country collapse and have problems, and how many of those problems are intertwined. I had a great experience that I definitely recommend to the students next year.