History
History is, surprisingly, one of the big topics of our day. By “surprisingly” I do not mean “unaccountably,” as it’s understandable that History could use a looking over. I mean that it is surprising: I do not think that it would have been predicted a decade ago that as millennials—entitled, lazy, and coddled—crossed the threshold toward becoming the dominant generation of influence on US culture, History would become a Big Interesting Topic.
I have the large student loan debt plus collapsed career trajectory of a highly trained “critical thinker,” i.e. I have a masters in English. Sometimes i forget how good of a critical thinker I am. About negative 80 thousand dollars good is how good.
But in truth, I forget that I am a better critical thinker than the average grocery store employee. In general it’s more believable to me that I am close to average at whatever’s being discussed — this is just statistically probable. That’s literally what average means.
But then I must recall a mechanistic cause, the 80 grand, the good reasons I am a better critical thinker than my colleagues in the aisles: For several years I was encouraged on a near daily basis to read and understand arguments, evaluate and challenge them, and write and talk about it.
There were lessons I learned in liberal arts courses that I wouldn’t understand for a decade.
There was one in particular that fell flat with me at the time, but much later, and again this morning, I recalled as having had a deep influence on how I think about HISTORY.
This was a Generals course in the Honors program. It felt like a waste of time. The professor was a historian and I had no idea why I had to take this very loose course on nothing. In retrospect I suspect this was closest to the Ivy League experience of any course I took as an undergrad, given small class size, and that the professor was himself an Ivy League graduate if I recall.
One assignment early in the semester was to write a very brief personal history, maybe two pages long.
This was followed by about 6 more assignments, each basically the same as the first: write a brief personal history. But for each, there were restrictions and rules. For one the requirement was to write the history only in terms of concrete documents. I could describe myself as having graduated from high school based on having a diploma. I could refer to the books I had as a kid, my test scores, my journals.
For another, there was the requirement that all of the autobiography had to be in terms of economics of my family. For another, all in terms of the beliefs and religion or lack of it. For another, it had to be framed with public records only.
I can’t recall all the different types of autobiographies we wrote but I do know that I was pretty sure that the professor was just too lazy to come up with course work and instead was flying by the seat of his pants.
But years later I felt that I understand much better what decisions historians make when they write a history, or tell a history, or remember their history: it’s a crafted take based on specific selected items, ideas, scenes, moments — and the way those decisions are made change the nature of the history entirely.
I don’t remember if I even finished the course or dropped out, but I think I got the point, in retrospect.