My final reading log outlines my thoughts on how historians “do” history and what “doing” history means. In order to answer these question, you have to understand what history is and what in involves.
“Final Reading Log
When I think about history, I think of dates, events, buildings and battles. Overall, I think anything that is worth documenting and is significant to society is worth documenting and later turns into what we call, history. I think history is a way of showing people within a society or certain region how different things are today and how they have changed from the time it was documented, to today. When stating the question, “how do you do history?” it’s hard to answer, because I don’t believe in “doing” history, I believe one participates in the documenting of history as well as the sharing of history. However, in order to answer the question, I believe you “do” history by recording the dates, times, people, and places an important event is taking place, (or anything significantly different or new). History is obviously associated with the past, however I find it amazing that we participate in history every day, whether it’s in class or in our free time, whether it’s teenagers putting everything on snapchat or events being shown on the news, history is all around us. We always learn about the past history, but we never learn about history that is being discovered today.
Last year, I took a course that was called “The History of Everything” and at first I thought it was a really dumb and pointless class but once I came to the realization that nobody ever thinks about where the basic things in life came from, it grabbed my attention. For example, was a desk just put on this earth and we learned to use it? No, someone built it. Was a toilet just in the first house that was ever built and people had to learn how to use it? No, it was created and built by people who had the idea. No matter what the idea is, or what the object is, there is always a place, person, or region it originated from.
Throughout the semester (and prior history classes) I have learnt that history is all around us and something we all participate in every day. I find this fact is emphasized enough through history classes or every day knowledge, so it was nice to be brought to the understanding that everything we have today, and overall, everything in general happened because of something or someone.
I think this ties into historical thinking because of the thought process that goes into thinking about where everything came from, it’s a baffling thing to think that everything around you was invented at one point or another, especially when it’s an object we use every day. When we think about historical events, I believe that we have to keep an open mind about where the information is coming from. This is equivalent to not using Wikipedia when doing research because it can be edited. History can also be edited, there are always two sides to every story and I think it’s important to understand that you may not always be getting the truth about how certain things happened. I don’t believe there were major altercations made through the way history is told, for example, Hitler and Stalin were two very bad people, that we all know as a fact, however there may be bits of the story missing. For example, there are plenty of conspiracy theories out there about Hitler’s death, and if it’s real. It’s important, as a historian to understand that there are always going to be pieces of the puzzle that are missing.”