Perhaps you had to face a dilemma where you had to decide between adapting to the habits of the indigenous inhabitants and sustaining your own habits when you first arrived at an unfamiliar place. You might have also visited a tourist place that is notourious for symbolizing an unpleasant historical event. These probable events precisely correlate to the topics “When in Rome, should we do as the Romans do?” and “Dark Tourism” respectively. I recently participated in a seminar in which there were a dozen or so attendees, and the sole purpose of this seminar was to critically analyze these topics. I will provide a brief recap of what happened before and during the seminar, sincerely reflect on my performance, and recapitulate the conclusions to the topics we ultimately came up with.

Preceding the seminar, us attendees were provided with many relevant articles and extracts. Numerous people, including myself, printed and speculated these resources in preparation for this conference. Prior to the seminar, two questionable hosts were chosen to lead the meeting. These two hosts were tasked with preparing questions related to the topics beforehand, in which they accomplished fulfillingly. As soon as the first question was broadcasted, one thing was evident. The amount of participation in this seminar was going to be much larger than the previous discussion. This was conspicuous as many more people raised their hands to share their answers. In fact, it probably took more than 30 minutes for all of the people who wanted to announce their answers to express their points associated to the first question alone. Because each question was taking so much time, we were only able to get through the first topic in the first day. The following day, we began examining the second topic of the seminar, dark tourism. Most attendees weren’t as serious as they were the previous day, mainly because they weren’t familiar with the prompt. Nonetheless, we managed to conclude the entire seminar that day.

Throughout past class discussions, I have never been very eager to share my opinions, and this seminar was no different. Despite the fact that I had prepared resources for this seminar, I only spoke if I knew that no one else had anything to say, which was indicated by extensive periods of silence. I listened attentively at the presenters so that I could stimulate my critical thinking, which led to the production of higher quality answers instead of mindless common sense that anyone could rant on about with minimal thought. As I mentioned before, there were a dozen or so attendees, and not everyone could share everything they had in store. I just prioritized listening over speaking, that’s all. I didn’t desire a high score, as all I really sought out for was knowledge to the topic. Although I only ended up speaking around three times, I am still satisfied with my performance.

Many worthwhile statements were proclaimed relevant to the main topics. Determining if a habit is good or bad is completely based on opinion and subjectivity. You should always prioritize the respect of unfamiliar cultures, especially if you’re the foreigner. I affirmed that if a culture doesn’t force you to do something, take, for example, spit on the ground, you don’t have to, even if the local people are accustomed to it. As for dark tourism, we really only identified different dark tourist sites, such as Chernobyl and Auschwitz, as well as whether or not you these places should be restricted. Some people said that they should, because it’s just an unpleasant reminder about something melancholy that happened in the past, while others said that you can learn a lot from going there and experiencing the scene. These are just some of the conclusions we attendees came up with during the two sessions of the seminar.

Succinctly, the seminar was fairly successful, and I’m satisfied with my personal performance. Many precious declarations were stated, and this extensive examination, just like the previous seminar, has most definitely helped us improve our critical thinking, listening, and speaking.

3