Last Blog

Wednesday October 31, 2012

     Welp, this marks the last blog of the semester! I am VERY happy to not have to blog about each and every class after this!  The rest of the semester is going to be spent only on our papers: reviewing them, editing, and finding any additional information.  I am actually enjoying the new change in my topic focus because for the entire 1920s Aurora College worked hard to fund raise for their endowment and then it just disappears during the Great Depression.  I like my topic more because it is actually about the school that I go to, rather than the city of Aurora as a whole.  I have spent my mornings and afternoons doing research and I have started writing a little bit. 
     Today, we started off class by looking at one other student's introduction about African American midwives in the South.  I never really understood the concept of a midwife, but LaSonya's paper makes me want to read more about it.  She seems to have a great deal of information on her topic, but it seems a bit muddled in some places to me, though I am sure that she will do an awesome job.
     After looking over the introduction, we began talking about our reading for the day from What Should I Do With My Life?  Though it seemed like a lot to read it actually went quite fast.  The main point of the reading was to never burn bridges in the workplace, have your jobs and priorities lined up, and how to really make yourself stand out among hundreds of people when applying for a job.  Some people in the book had worked for the same company their entire life!  Like the book states, my parents worked the same jobs for the majority of their lives, so I don't find it that strange, but now-a-days people do not stay with the same job for that long.  I think its because people are always looking for something better and are willing to advance in their field even if it makes them unhappy (people will do anything for more money!).  But this book talks again about people who are willing to give up big paychecks in order to do what they love and help others in the process.  Many people are just ridding through life thinking that their happy and that they are somehow making a difference in the world until one day something major happens (like 9/11) and it throws some people into a state of shock which eventually makes them rethink their lives and their priorities.  One story in the book, about Leela de Souza, talked about how she ended up doing something that she liked and was good at even though it wasn't the "perfect job."  I often think of this because there is a wide variety of things that I could see myself doing in the future, many of which relate to history.  The only problem is that some of the things that I absolutely HATE doing, I am very good at.  For example, I love to experiment with artwork and create drawings and painting, but I am not any good (the picture in my mind is always so much better than what is actually produced).  On the other hand, I have been told by many people that I am good at writing papers and reviewing/editing the work of others.......yea.....hate writing papers!  It takes me forever to just finally settle down enough to be able to sit at the computer for like five hours to get a paper done, but once it is done I am usually satisfied with my work and I rarely ever go back and change things (just go back and make sure everything sounds okay and spelling/grammar is right).  Editing is kinda fun because I get to read other people's work and learn something about a topic that I myself would never have thought to think about.  Editing and reading other peoples' papers also helps me with my own writing because it exposes me to a variety of different forms of writing and helps me think outside the box and look at a topic from another perspective.  I am really hoping that I will like what I do in the future (hopefully high school history teacher!) because then I can be creative in the different ways I teach, show students a variety of different viewpoints, and I can also read their papers and see what they think on certain matters.  The only problems that I think I will have is, as I recall, high school classes never went into too much detail because there was so much information that needed to be covered each semester and not enough time, so students only get a broad/general idea of a topic without actually getting to see how interesting and significant it actually is.  The other problem that I think I will have is the textbooks...they make history super boring by just throwing out dates and information, they do not really engage the students.  So, when thinking of this, I think I will try out teaching high school for a while, but eventually my new goal is to go back to school and get my masters in history (probably 1900s to present) and teach at a community college or university.  This way, I can still teach, but I can go into more detail and make students write papers (I never wrote a single paper for history in high school!).  I think writing about historical events is important because when you actually sit down to write about a topic you have to think about it from a million different views and do research.  It is way more fun when teachers let students put their own spin on a topic instead of just giving them a "write 5 pages about ____" kind of assignment.  Ha, I seemed to have gotten a lil off topic...
     We will not be meeting as a class for another two weeks because students are having their individual meetings with the professor.  I can't wait for my meeting even though I have a TON of things to do before then.  I am sure that I will get a lot more help on my paper and some constructive criticism.  On November 12th I meet with the professor, the 14th is when our rough drafts are due and the 19th is our 15 minute long presentation to the class about out research.  I am just so happy that 1.) this semester is almost over and 2.) I have no exams this semester because I have no time to do anything else except research, read, and write.  Speaking of writing, I am done with this blog and must now go and write a 6-7 page paper for my Hitler and the Nazi Revolution  class.  So, finally, my last blog is done....

~fin