Thursday, April 8, 2010

History is...

Today I want to talk about history. I know people thought I was a giant dork when I was in college, but I loved being almost completely immersed in my subject. It was never weird for me to be reading some esoteric history text and even when I complained, I pretty much loved it. Now I’ve been out of school for almost a year, and it will be at least another year before I can go back the way I want to, and I hate it. I can feel my brain slowly atrophying from lack of use. Let’s face it, coming up with activities for a dozen eight year olds just is not the same. That is not to denigrate my profession, I do think I have one of the best jobs in the world, but I need more. I need a challenge in my life. I need the intensity of writing my senior thesis, the passion of student teaching and knowing I have to able to answer any question my students might come up with, the excitement that came with learning something new just about every minute. I need to get back to school, asap.
But, none of that was history per se, that was me whining, which I hate in small children and I don’t think my reader should have to put up with in me. I’m tempted to delete and start fresh, but I promised myself that my blog would not become impersonal just because a small number of people on the internet might choose to read it. I promised myself that I would use it to help me make some of those harder decisions, like if I should go back to school which is an expensive decision. So, I’ll leave it. But, history…
When I was in my senior seminar, I had to write a paper using the prompt “History is…”. It was for our final, and was the only thing I wrote for that particular teacher that did not have a length requirement. We had to write until we felt we had sufficiently covered the topic. At that point I kind of wanted to write “History is, my favorite thing to study.” and walk away, but I did know better. Instead I taped quotes about what history was to my dorm wall until I thought I had memorized them to use in my final. Today I was putting some quotes and such on my blog sidebars and I came across one of those quotes. "The function off the historian is neither to love the past nor to emancipate himself from the past, but to master and understand it as the key to the understanding of the present." E. H. Carr. Unfortunately, I think it might be what set me off on this maudlin thought process, but I love it.
Okay, I’m done for tonight. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll write something someone might actually want to read. Or maybe I’ll post one of my short stories…

No comments:

Post a Comment