Introduction

Hello there! Thank you for visiting my blog! My name is Andrew Lampi, and right now I am a senior at Westborough High School. This past semester I have been enrolled in a course called Facing History and Ourselves and this is our final project. In this project, we are to create a blog that tells anyone who chooses to visit it why we took the course and what it meant to us.

First, I’ll tell a little bit about myself. I’m a senior here at WHS and I’m a three season athlete who runs Cross Country and both Indoor and Outdoor Track. I help run the Peer Mediation program in the school and I am the president of Venture Crew 100, a venturing group based in town. Outside of school and venture crew, I go to church every weekend, I’m Roman Catholic, and I enjoy spending time outdoors with both my parents and my younger brother. I run a lot on days I don’t have practice and I enjoy spending time with my friends as well as spending time by myself.

Next, I’d like to describe what Facing History is and why I decided to take it. At the end of last year, I was told that one of the courses I had originally signed up to take was going to be dropped from the curriculum. This would mean that I would have to choose another course in order to fill out my schedule. I was stuck between this course and an American Civil War course. I spent a couple of days trying to decide but when I couldn’t come up with a choice, I decided go the old way. I flipped a coin and that was it, I signed up for this course. It was a choice I will never regret.

Our teacher, Mr. Gallagher, always told us that this was a class that was about us. It was designed so that we might take it and look at ourselves and try to determine who we are and what we would do when put in situations. The first half of the course had to deal with preparing us for the second half. In the first half we watched films that made us think about the actions that people took and whether or not we would do the same thing. We watched films such as the short film "After the First" to more renowned classics like "12 Angry Men". After the end of the first marking period, we transitioned to much more heavy and deep material. We began to look at films having to do with the Holocaust, we watched things such as "Uprising" to "Amen" to more known films like "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" to actual footage shot by film crews at the death camps. We had class discussions after these films and would have to blog our thoughts about each piece after we viewed it. There were no guidelines, all we had to do was share our thoughts. As time went on, I found myself looking more and more forward to going to this class because afterwards, I just felt enlightened, simply better as a person.

This course had a truly profound effect on me. Something I will never forget. I have noticed the change in my personality from before I took this course to my having taken this course and I must say, it has been for the better.