Alastor
10-Mar-09, 06:17
Some of you will give a crap, others won't.
My street cred:
I fell in love with History when I was in 8th grade. I never looked back. I always knew that one day my path would be inter-twined with historical work of one kind or another.
I became a fanatic about history, reading and watching everything I could about topics that interested me. I would memorize things. I could recite entire tomes of knowledge about events of the past. I could name places and people that other people never even heard of.
When I entered college I was in for a rude awakening; that this is not what Historians actually did and it wasn't going to help me a bit. Luckily, I loved what they actually did even more than what I thought they did.
I went on to graduate from college in 4.5 years with two degrees as a National Honors Student in both of my majors as well as my overall GPA despite working part, full, or more than full-time throughout college.
By the end of my BA degree I was a student-teacher in the honors level courses on my campus.
I was given scholarships every semester. I made the President's List. I was elected as the President of Phi Alpha Theta, the History Honors Society. I was published in The Historian, a scholarly journal for Historians.
What it means:
An Historian is not someone who memorizes facts, dates, places and names. That's what a trivia champion does. An Historian is a behavioral scientist. It's a Social Science. It's about how people interact with each other and their world and learning about those things in an effort to see our current circumstances for what they are, and reasonably hypothesize about likely outcomes down the road.
It often extends beyond people however, and into other areas that we're not as familiar with as well. Climate change for example has a major impact on our lives and one that Historians can be very valuable in dealing with in the decades to come.
Often historians must look at circumstances and exterior forces and how we as people engage them in order to be productive and actually do what we're supposed to do; solve problems. It requires a very vast understanding of people and often of things that don't superficially appear to involve people at all.
When our role does involve people, being an Historian isn't about knowing what day George Washington was born. It's about understanding the things he did right, the things he did wrong, how he should have done it, and how we today can do it better than he did (or at least avoid similar mistakes) in our own lives each day.
An Historian doesn't recite facts. An Historian... Understands people. Basic human behaviors, predicting actions, accounting for human nature, constraints (both human and environmental), empathy, understanding, and ultimately being able to articulate all of those skills in an effort to make tomorrow a little bit better than today.
Trivia champions memorize. Historians analyze.
If anyone is interested in finding out more about what Historians actually do (or are supposed to do at least), lay it on me. I'll do the best I can to answer honestly.
My street cred:
I fell in love with History when I was in 8th grade. I never looked back. I always knew that one day my path would be inter-twined with historical work of one kind or another.
I became a fanatic about history, reading and watching everything I could about topics that interested me. I would memorize things. I could recite entire tomes of knowledge about events of the past. I could name places and people that other people never even heard of.
When I entered college I was in for a rude awakening; that this is not what Historians actually did and it wasn't going to help me a bit. Luckily, I loved what they actually did even more than what I thought they did.
I went on to graduate from college in 4.5 years with two degrees as a National Honors Student in both of my majors as well as my overall GPA despite working part, full, or more than full-time throughout college.
By the end of my BA degree I was a student-teacher in the honors level courses on my campus.
I was given scholarships every semester. I made the President's List. I was elected as the President of Phi Alpha Theta, the History Honors Society. I was published in The Historian, a scholarly journal for Historians.
What it means:
An Historian is not someone who memorizes facts, dates, places and names. That's what a trivia champion does. An Historian is a behavioral scientist. It's a Social Science. It's about how people interact with each other and their world and learning about those things in an effort to see our current circumstances for what they are, and reasonably hypothesize about likely outcomes down the road.
It often extends beyond people however, and into other areas that we're not as familiar with as well. Climate change for example has a major impact on our lives and one that Historians can be very valuable in dealing with in the decades to come.
Often historians must look at circumstances and exterior forces and how we as people engage them in order to be productive and actually do what we're supposed to do; solve problems. It requires a very vast understanding of people and often of things that don't superficially appear to involve people at all.
When our role does involve people, being an Historian isn't about knowing what day George Washington was born. It's about understanding the things he did right, the things he did wrong, how he should have done it, and how we today can do it better than he did (or at least avoid similar mistakes) in our own lives each day.
An Historian doesn't recite facts. An Historian... Understands people. Basic human behaviors, predicting actions, accounting for human nature, constraints (both human and environmental), empathy, understanding, and ultimately being able to articulate all of those skills in an effort to make tomorrow a little bit better than today.
Trivia champions memorize. Historians analyze.
If anyone is interested in finding out more about what Historians actually do (or are supposed to do at least), lay it on me. I'll do the best I can to answer honestly.