Final Coursework

The last couple weeks went really fast! I will miss this module because during the years all I have gained was mainly theoretical side of the things, however, this module gave me both theory and practical. The weekly exercise or group work motivates you to learn more about subjects and be able to discuss it, which really built up my confidence in talking in front of the class. I found most if not all the topics very interesting this could be because I made an effort to go extra mile in finding information every week, which I don't do that often but the way David teach this module is impossible to not do so. Last weeks work is one of my favourite topics of the module "Terrorism" because I always wanted to understand how people deal or felt about terrorist attacks, specially after 9/11. My paper was based on Lopez report on Train attacks in Madrid, which killed around 200 people. Lopez wanted to establish whether the Spanish people behaved in the same way as Americans after the terrorist attacks. As we all know the 9/11 had huge impact on Americans and the rest of world. After 9/11 many Americans avoided air travel and they used more cars on the road instead, which according to some is more risky than traveling by plane. The results of more cars on the road caused many accidents and fatal death in America. Lopez suggested that the Spanish, however, still travelled by train after the attacks and had less accidents or fatal deaths. This shows that terrorist attacks did not change Spanish day to day live. There are many reasons behind this such as, 9/11 attacks caused more death than Madrid attacks, Americans use more cars than Spanish or maybe American people may have used unfamiliar roads after the attacks so on. Lopez mentioned one important point, which could really explain the causes of Spanish people indifference's towards terrorist attacks. He said maybe Spanish people were familiar with terrorist attacks for many years so this could just be other one for them. I do understand the reaction of American people because it doesn't really matter the scales of terrorist attacks, they all have big impact whether it is physical or psychological. Individuals live in fear as the attacks could be anytime and anywhere. After what happened in London I do get very conscious in travelling by train or even buses so I am forced to drive my car around, however, this doesn't mean that I'm safe, all I need to do is learn how to live with this fear and find best strategy for coping with it.