What if? History Benchmark


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I fully enjoyed working on this 4th quarter "What If?" benchmark. I have always been interested in immigration, and so I chose to focus on immigration. My Point of Divergence was Manifest Destiny. I changed historical events that had occurred in the year 1845; the Annexation of Texas. I killed the 11th president of the United States: James K. Polk. I did this by making James Brown Clay, son of Henry Clay assassin, causing events like the Annexation of Texas, the Mexican American War, and the Mexican cession to occur. I envisioned the result of this change would decrease the importance of immigration today. Mexicans would not be entering the U.S.A., suffering from poverty and corruption. Their lands would have been filled with abounding goods and no troublesome would exist today.
What I enjoyed about this project was that we had the chance to select a historical event as we wished, rather than being given what to do. Each individual was able to produce a product of their creativity. Oddly enough, I did not find this project to be challenging. I thought that I would have difficulties in comprehending the historical concept of it, but all went well. If I didn't understand something fully, I would simply watch a documentary or search it thoroughly and then add he information onto my final product. The most interesting event that I investigated was the Mexican American War. When I watched the documentary "Mexican American War" on the History channel what caught my attention was this quote:"If he bullied Mexico enough, Mexico would give up their lands." It's crazy to me to see how America supported Polk's decisions of war.

Decisions lead to more decisions, as do problems. A decision within a decision-decision inception! A historical event leads to more historical events. A decision in history is done accordingly to the finalized first decision. For Instance, in James K. Polk's presidential campaign, he makes promises and ends up keeping his promises like his promise to annex Texas, but that results in the Mexican American War. Yes, decisions in history are very influential indeed. Systemic decisions impact historical records by giving a result accordingly to the decisions that are made. I believe this project could be improved if the project was assigned earlier in the quarter. This project is very time consuming and with Summer kicking in, it's difficult to put on my thinking cap- at least for me it is. If I had the power to do this project over again, I would have worked on the project day by day, rather than all at once. I crammed in doing my research, when there was no reason for it if I worked on it week by week. I just felt that I wouldn't comprehend that a part of me said that I had to research everything thoroughly and not miss anything; it made me research many things all at once.


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