Anyone Else Abhore Personality Question? (2 Viewers)

[RyelleBlitz]

b)'Events shape people more than people shape events.'

How accurate is this statement in relation to the personality you have studied?



Ugh!
Normally, the question has something to do with whether the person was a good guy or a bad guy. So I had it all figured out for Albert Speer. Bah!

 

[navelj]

I agree - for Nelson Mandela i was all prepared for a question evaluating them as a revolutionary, conservative or nationalist - where did this crap question come from - not in the syllabus - that's for sure!!!!! NOT HAPPY - anyone else do Nelson Mandela?

 

[anaaa]

b)'Events shape people more than people shape events.'

How accurate is this statement in relation to the personality you have studied?



Ugh!
Normally, the question has something to do with whether the person was a good guy or a bad guy. So I had it all figured out for Albert Speer. Bah!

yeah same here, so i had to tag on these ridiculous lines about how 'the rise of nazism in germany shaped speer'. normally speer's my best part, but i'm not too sure what the markers will make of what i wrote, it was pretty desperate!

 

[TheGlenn]

Actually I thought it was good for mine - Douglas MacArthur. Initially I was a bit...ARRRGH but then I thought about it and I pulled it off quite well. Did about 5.5 pages for that part.
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[w00dy.]

i actually felt somewhat prepared in a way for some whacked out quote, for our trials we had a really weird kind of quote which we had to adapt to our personality, so i guess i was used to doing that.

once i thought about it, the question really did and didnt seem to fit Leni, so thats how i argued it.

 

[blink376]

I thought it was easier to argue against it for Trotsky, anyone do Trotsky?

 

[cadylayne]

I was a bit taken aback, but overall I think I did ok. For Speer I argued that Sereny believes events in his childhood shaped him, whereas Schmidt and Van Der Vat think Speer should have exerted his power to shape events favourably.

 

[Ademir]

This pissed me off - 6 years of fairly simple early life/public life questions with maybe an evaluation one thrown in there every once in a while, and then this whacked out crap. But I sort of made it work for Trotsky.

I argued that he shaped events, and that events shaped him. Was sort of desperate for this section haha.

 

[punkbabe89]

I studied Mandela, and for him at least, that question wasn't fantastic.
I disliked it, as did the rest of my class.

 

[Magicana]

I did Speer and argued that he did not shape events, that he was shaped by them - rather passive when it came to everything, didn't exert any outward influence to try and do things (Except the scorched earth thing, he stopped that on his own accord - to save his arse from the allies).

 

[mc88]

I agree - for Nelson Mandela i was all prepared for a question evaluating them as a revolutionary, conservative or nationalist - where did this crap question come from - not in the syllabus - that's for sure!!!!! NOT HAPPY - anyone else do Nelson Mandela?

I agree with you there.

I find most personality questions in this form aren't suited for Mandela. The most I could do was provide a couple of examples that shaped Mandela's career (eg, Freedom Charter, joing ANC, establishing Youth League, establishing the Spear of the Nation) say that these did effect him as a person greatly, and then contrast this to when he was in prison and he as a person shaped the resistance to apartheid that occured without taking part.

It definetly was not suited. In fact, the only personality question I've ever seen that was is a one which said "Figures are motive by an ideal rather than self-interest".

It's very unfair to give people questions like that when their personality spends most of his prominent political life in prison.

 

[luv.bubble]

this q fits trotsky so well, if you thought about it.
quite easy to argue
lol doing this essay made me feel like i was doing an eng essay

 

[Wooz]

Yeh i had a convoluted argument about it, 'Events shape people more than people shape events.' I argued against it, claiming that Gorbachev was an opportunist, but he shaped the events, such as his own reforms of 'Glasnost' and 'Perestoika' which spelled the demise of the Soviet Union and i said it was rather in the case of Gorbachev, that 'People shape events more than events shape people'.

 

[morganforrest]

Mmm i did Trotsky....I said he shaped events, that events didn't shape him, because a) he stayed true to his core belief structure, orthodox marxism, b) he wasn't able to respond to the changing political situation and ultimately turned out to be a bogus politician, not suited to the intrigue of statesmanship and c) he was a practical revolutionary who telescoped traditional views on the course of the revolution and altered events to suit his own idelogy

 

[i.love.my.duck]

I thought it was easier to argue against it for Trotsky, anyone do Trotsky?

yep i do trotsky...and i was really fine with this one, coz of our trial question:

"does man make history, or does history make the man" discuss this quote in relation to your personality

 

[blink376]

Yea, I mainly said he shaped events as he stayed true to his ideology despite his being arrested, exiled, 1905 failure etc. But then in the power struggle, he let events such as Stalin's maneauvres shape him to an extent. Dunno if that's right.

 

[13thmonkey]

I thought the first personality question was horrible. 'Describe' their role? I hate describing, and Ho Chi Minh's role is so multi-faceted it's hard not to discuss. Could just be I'm a loser with communist sympathies though.

 

[Abbyruth]

Yeah, I thought the first part about describing their role was annoying. I liked the second part though, best bit of the whole exam for me. Easy to write about in regards to J Edgar Hoover 'cause he was so manipulative.

 

[el gwapo]

What a left-field question.

But I thought I answered it well, but with such a boring personality (Leni Riefenstahl) it was hard to stay awake and keep writing. I did a lot of describing in both questions, even when the 15 mark one was more of the analysis bit. I needed to discuss and describe the events that shaped Riefenstahl.

 

[sickdog12]

haha i did jinnah (india topic that no-one seems to do) and it worked pretty well i argued against it so it didnt go toooooo bad