Black Friday in the UK, and Cyber Monday

Its that time of the year again when you start to see all of the big chain stores putting on their Christmas sales. For the last couple of years I've seen more and more stores get earlier and earlier with their sales, and also more stores actively doing more to promote their sales and entice more people into their shops.

One such thing that many UK stores have begun to adopt is the American tradition of 'black Friday'. For anyone that doesn't know what this day is, its I think typically held on the Friday closest to the beginning December, and on this day shops all across the US slash their prices, having huge sales to get people out earlier in massive droves to get spending and buying gifts.
Black Friday in America has however begun to gain some negative publicity over the last couple of years as people have literally been beaten up and trampled over so that others could get their hands on deals first.

Over here in the UK our Black Friday doesn't really stand up that well compared to how it is in the US. Firstly although business's really do want you spending money in their stores, they aren't really prepared to slash their prices as much as the US stores. Secondly and probably most importantly because these sales aren't as discounted there aren't people sat queuing days before waiting for them or trampling over others to get them and so compared to the US our day is a lot safer. Lastly, in the UK this day hasn't been publicised that much and so there are still many people that aren't that sure what Black Friday is, and so don't go out to these sales because they don't know they are on.

As I said our day is pretty much a watered down version of the original and there are rarely any massive deals worth running out to get in fear that they'll go out of stock quickly. They do provide an incentive go into shops and have a good look around but at this point they are more an added bonus to stuff that you were already thinking of buying.

With the popularity of online shopping having sky rocketed significantly over the past however many years, a new sales day has recently been introduced specifically for online deals known as 'Cyber Monday'. This is always the Monday following Black Friday, and for those of us in the UK is where you'll find the more wallet opening deals.
The only drawback to Cyber Monday, or positive depending on how you look at it, is that you have to be literate enough to use the internet, and to find the very best deals have to be quite tech savvy. With there being thousands of websites to browse through, the best place to often find all of these deals together are on certain forums or deal dedicated website where people post any vouchers, codes or deals they've found.

Its been kind of strange to see the borrowing of Black Friday, being brought over and used within the UK, when it has no roots here, that I know of. Whether its company's just trying to use any tactic they can to get more money out of their customers or another melding of UK and American cultures, it looks as though Black Friday will be here to stay. Hopefully if this is the case, they'll at least take a page out of the Americans book and gives us some decent but safe sales.

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.