In the essay “The Role of Interpretive Communities in Remembering and Learning”, author Farhat Shazhad writes about the effect that an individual’s community can have on the way that they perceive and remember events. She conducted an experiment involving ninety nine university students from a variety of national backgrounds and cultures, and asked them to give an account of their memories and thoughts about the war on terror. One of the students interviewed was an eighteen year old second generation immigrant from India. He wrote “I don’t know, all I heard is partial and biased stories told by our media and politicians.” (Pg. 310). He says that he doesn’t know what to believe, because he has only heard one side of the story. He recognizes that sources of information such as media, can send out extremely biased information regarding an event because of private interests. I feel the same way about the war on terror as he does because the only ways that I learned about the war on terror was by watching television, or discussing it with people. Both of those sources can provide extremely biased opinions based on what they want to believe, or what they want other people to believe. When listening to other people give their opinions on issues such as the war on terror it is important to remember that just because they believe that they are correct about something, doesn’t make it fact. It is very hard to know both sides of the story unless you have actually witnessed whatever you are discussing. When listening to another person’s point of view it is important to think about what they have said and sometimes question it because of the possibility that they do not know all of the facts.