Okay guys, here’s my homework hot-take that no one asked for: historical writing and research is fun and I am addicted. I may be a little biased because my major has everything to do with history and writing, but I still find it interesting and almost relaxing. I wouldn’t say it’s the easiest thing in the world, and it can be incredibly time consuming— especially if you have four classes all asking for a research assignment in the same week! Yet, something about investigating different events and people makes me feel like a detective, and frankly I cannot get enough of that.
I could not do what the STEM girlies do. Math and science are just not for me. Sitting down and working through math equations, or memorizing the exact sequence of DNA or a chemical compound does not spell a fun time for me. Some people totally eat it up, and they should! But I know for a fact that I couldn’t bring myself to do pages of homework a day when I could just write a paper on events that already happened. Academic achievement is the type of validation I hinge myself on and seek constantly, and I know I wouldn’t get what I wanted if I had to solve equations all the time or design a machine. I would be so lost! But finding a topic to research and discuss various aspects of? Sign me up! I am always down to talk— in fact, my mom once said I had a big personality with lots of opinions, so I think that makes me qualified to be a historian.
Historical writing almost always has a direction. When you’re writing a piece for a class, typically they will give you a question to answer or a topic to investigate. Sometimes it can be a bit challenging and annoying to look through a ton of secondary sources and primary sources, but sometimes it can really interest you and get you sent down a rabbit hole of knowledge. JSTOR (where I find all my journals and sources, I swear) has taken up all my free time! I personally enjoy the rabbit hole approach, it even helps me find ideas and resources for other classes. The open ended questions can be annoying, especially if you aren’t sure what you want your topic to be yet. However, I think it’s fun to dissect different events and provide different angles of looking at something.
Historical research is almost like a puzzle… Whether you’re talking about myths and legends people believed in and reasons why, or about a specific event or series of events. You are limited on creative input and can’t just add wizards or a love story wherever, but that takes a lot of stress off your writing. You just have to answer your own question— typically a why or how question— and provide evidence. It satisfies my need to always be correct (within reason, I promise), while also satisfying my need to be a private investigator. Historical writing isn’t always about what exactly happened— but it can be— and it can also be about an opinion of an event or interpretation. I enjoy writing my opinion on certain topics and turning it in to see if I can convince others to feel the same way. Sometimes historical research writing is just like a debate, you find a side or create one and then defend it while also talking about the other side or sides.
History is one of those fields that can never go away, simply because things are always changing. Yet, it is also a field that requires a lot of people to look at things in contrasting ways. Not everyone will want to write about the same event from the same perspective, and I wouldn’t want to read that anyway. Historical research has opened the door for me to become more knowledgeable about other cultures and traditions, and other countries’ issues while still keeping up with today’s events. You can even draw comparisons of the past versus the present, which is something everyone should do in my opinion. Not everyone will agree with your work, but some will. That’s the beauty of history! Perspective is dependent on one’s own personal experience, and the more diversity talked about in the field, the more accurate the history is. History can be a lot more than just a date and event. In my opinion, it’s not as black and white as it is made out to be in highschool.Some people are more suited to writing papers than others, and I am one of those people. However, there is no shame if you aren’t. It isn’t for everyone, and like I said previously, STEM just isn’t for me either. I envy my STEM friends though, sometimes what they’re doing seems leagues beyond me, but then they share those same thoughts about what I’m doing and I feel less alone. This type of writing always interests me, even if I don’t really want to do it. But I find that it helps me open my mind up and in the end I always enjoy learning something new. Historical research gives me something to dig around in, and frankly I appreciate it and love it.