The Privilege of Being a Student.docVIP

The Privilege of Being a Student 　　It is always easy to underestimate how fortunate we are as students. This is what I learned last week in my International Relations discussion. 　　This discussion took a comparatively unusual form—debate. We were divided into groups and were assigned one of the five paradigms② of international relations，namely，Realism，Liberalism，Marxism，Constructivism③ and Domestic Politics. Then，we were asked to use our assigned paradigm to explain the outbreak and the one of the characters of World War I. Of course，the purpose of our debate would be to convince others that our assigned paradigm is the most competent in explaining World War I. 　　The debate was intense. Our group was assigned Liberalism and in the five minutes of preparation，we gathered all the historical facts that we could remember，trying to support our point. After each group presented arguments，we were then asked to choose one paradigm to criticize and respond to the criticisms if we were targeted by any other group. Our critique④ choice was Realism. We came up with several weaknesses of Realism arguments. We ourselves were under attack too. Some of the arguments we found hard to rebut⑤ and personally，I did agree on some of the attack arguments the other teams shot at us. 　　After the debate，we casted our votes⑥ according to which one paradigm we found most convincing（and apparently we could not vote for our own paradigm）. I remember，although I voted for the Domestic Politics paradigm and agreed with them on some points，I was very disappointed when the “winning”paradigm was not us. I felt the need to continue the debate so that I could justify⑦ how Liberalism was，indeed，the best paradigm to understand World War I. 　　In the following reflection⑧，we talked about what we got out of the debate. It was obvious how most of us found the arguments of several paradigms compelling⑨ at the same time. As the debate went on，I found how I could combine different explanations of the World