What History Really Is

Once during my college career I was hanging out at a friend’s house when his roommate came in. We introduced ourselves and, since he discovered we were students at the same college, he asked me what my major was.  I told him, “I am a history major.” He began to explain that he was amazed that so many people had so many different talents, “Look at you,” he said with a nod, “You are good with memorization, memorizing all those dates and names.”  The whole evening I kept thinking about what my friend’s roommate’s assumption that history automatically equated a good memory and that the study of history is nothing more but memorizing dates, names, places, and every minute fact one can store in their minds.  As I think back on this interaction I confess I regret not taking a more aggressive stance, my only excuse was that I was in a new environment and his loquacious assumptions about the meaning of history shocked me.  His assumption brought me to the conclusion that this is what the world at large thinks of history and historians.

I may have choked when it came to discussing historiography with that individual, but that encounter has given me a drive to make history more than just a bunch of facts to be memorized.  The reason I started with a story is because that is what history is, a story of the past from a point of view.  I want to help the public have a better understanding of the past, a better rounded and complete view of history.  To show that instead of just memorizing a name, history is about a person.  Instead of memorizing a date, history is about a time that person lived in. Instead of memorizing a place, history is about a home, community, and a job that that person participated in every day life.  I desire to bring good, accurate, unbiased history to people who may otherwise go through their own lives not realizing that many people just like them had the same feelings and problems that they did. To help people connect to and learn from the past so that they may have a more vibrant future.