Learning History...

Since arriving at this new university I've come to remember something about why it is I love history so much and why I choose to continue doing it all these years.

Towards the end of college and whilst at Sheffield Hallam learning history tended to consist of learning page after page of facts, figures, dates and locations. You'd go through and learn about periods of history as though you were reading off a timeline of events; very linear, and jam packed full of info and data. Learning history in this way, honestly sucks the fun out of discovering all of these amazing and interesting periods of time.
The easiest way of describing how I mean when talking about history in this sense, is with what happens most often when you tell someone your doing History. There response most often then not is that they immediately assume if they throw a date at you you'll know everything that happened that day, and can reel off ten random facts about it just off the top of your head.

Studying at UEL however has brought back what I originally felt for this subject. History shouldn't just be about learning basic information on particular people, places or periods, but instead about discovering those lesser known facts, about putting yourself into the position of the people you are studying, to see the worlds not just through your eyes but through theirs.

What originally got me interested in history were the ancient civilisations, the ancient Egyptians and the Greeks. I don't know quite what it was but they held this grip over me, they were such interesting people, and everything I learnt about them made me want to learn even more. There was a time I could name 50 more ancient gods and what they were the gods of, I could tell you how labourers lived what Lind of food they ate, what kind of weapons the soldiers used and how fought. All of these things and much more, and not because they were reeled of in a classroom to me but because I went out of my way outside of the classroom to go and learn these things for myself.

Ironically whilst studying history at university you only have a handful of hours actually inside of university sat in lecturers, with the bulk of you time set aside for independent study where you are meant to go read up on the subject and learn all of the surrounding knowledge yourself.

Unfortunately having been taught this classroom style of history for so long, I never seem to get that interested in what i'm learning anymore, its just another piece of work that will get done, be examined and then we'll move on to the next topic. History should be like that, and luckily for me i'm starting to regain that interest and passion for the subject once again. Actually being taught as though we are aspiring historians and not just another lot of students doing history, shows firstly that the lecturers actually like what they have learnt and want to pass on their knowledge, and secondly reinforces the fact that although we are here to learn and study, we choose to come and learn and moreover we choose this particular subject because of the interest it holds for each of us.

Its nice to feel these feelings again for this subject, it has definitely been a while and should hopefully serve very useful throughout the year to come.