10 Events that Shaped the Greek City-States

10 Events that Shaped the Greek City-states

Svitak, Adora

Yesterday afternoon I gave a presentation on 10 Events that Shaped the Greek City-States. I am a wretched procrastinator and I had been working on the PowerPoint just that morning. The whole project was an assignment from Beastie.

I came down to class after my daily nap and remembered another part of my assignment--the "creative element." I had decided that my "creative element" would be edible, some food that the ancient Greeks might have eaten. So I hurried upstairs, opened a can of olives, threw some bread onto a plate, and made a second trip to bring down cups of yogurt. As far as I know, the rest of the class enjoyed the "creative element." Considering that they left no olives behind for me, I'm pretty sure of it.

So that the rest of the class would be able to see the presentation, I hooked up my computer to a projector and projected it onto the whiteboard. Katie was only too eager to help erase the board. I believe she may have thought it would have increased her chances of getting food.We tugged one of the tables out for the projector. At the moment, our classroom looks like a disaster scene because of that move, with the three tables all "lined" up in a weird zigzag and not much room for moving around, either. At the time, the idea of moving the tables struck me as an innovative idea, and the table would be a good place to put the projector.

I started my presentation by introducing Ancient Greece. Unfortunately, I got a little sidetracked when it came to the Ancient Greek gods. Greek mythology is one of my favorite subjects, but when I noted that Hera (Zeus's wife) was also his sister, the class asked me some questions that made it necessary to relate the whole Olympian family tree. I was not distracted for long, however, and we soon got back on topic--10 Events that shaped the Greek city-states.

My presentation described each event and showed how the event affected the Ancient Greek city-states. It also included a brief introduction to Ancient Greece. I enjoyed introducing Ancient Greece to everybody but I wasn't too crazy about the events that I talked about. During the presentation, I slightly regretted opening the whole can of olives--they were depleting rapidly, and I wasn't entirely sure if everybody was paying attention with all the food in front of them.

In general, I considered the presentation a success. There were no technological problems, I had actually managed to find all ten events (a feat I wasn't always sure I would accomplish), and I didn't use too much organic "Greek Gods" yogurt for the creative element. However, I did notice that I forgot to list my sources.