Caught In The Whirlwind
Posts tagged history
FREEEEE!!! (For Now)
Dec 12th
I took my American History 101 final last night, which means the class is done and I’m officially free! Woohoo! I think I did pretty well on it too, which was good considering I actually spent time studying for it. I usually don’t study much for tests, but generally I’m the kind of person that can look over their notes for 15 minutes before the test and call that studying.
I’ve also finally established contact with somebody at school to try and fix up my schedule problems for next semester. Those problems mainly being they’re not offering anything I need and haven’t offered this one specific class at night or on the weekends in, well…ever. The class is Software Engineering which is incredibly annoying to me because IT’S WHAT I DO AT MY JOB EVERY DAY. I also need to take a western civilization course which, surprise surprise…they’re not offering either.
And for some reason my Calc 1 course didn’t transfer over and I really don’t want to have to take that again. I need to talk with the registrar’s office I think and get that settled.
One thing at a time…
I Feel…Normal
Nov 13th
I’ve been in kind of a weird mood today, so far. But then it occurs to me that this is the first time in quite a while I’ve felt, well…normal, at least at work. I’m not entirely sure why. All I know is I haven’t felt cheerful during the day in quite some time, so I figured I should document the occasion.
This is doubly weird because tonight is my class night, so I won’t get home until around 9:30 or so. I spent some time yesterday at my parents house with my laptop, trying to escape from the pull of Final Fantasy long enough to finish writing my essay assignment for my history class.
1776 by David McCullough
Speaking of history, It’s kinda interesting going back through and taking US history again, but at a college level. It’s intriguing to me what you don’t learn in high school about certain events. Everything seems to be slanted a bit to paint a rosier picture of the events of the past. Take Christopher Columbus, for example. All the history books mention that he set out from Spain to find Southeast Asia/India and ended up in the New World, sparking an influx of European interest. I hadn’t learned until recently, however, that he wasn’t a really nice guy…contributing to the torture and enslavement of many of the natives of the islands there. Oops. And the revolutionary war (which I learned about when I read 1776 last month), learning how desperate the struggle really was and how it could have fallen apart at any moment.
Perhaps it’s because I’m more aware of the events happening in the world today than I was in High School, or that my current class is showing me that things weren’t quite what I thought they were. It makes it even more interesting that my teacher was also my high school history teacher, so I can kinda compare and contrast what we learned there with the way the information is presented now.
Lies My Teacher Told Me - James Loewen
I guess the whole point of this is I’m started to get interested in historical type books. Like I mentioned, I read 1776 last month, which I finished in roughly 3 days, so I’m starting to wonder what else is out there. My teacher mentioned a book by James W. Loewen titled Lies My Teacher Told Me which kinda goes along with this subject. I just ordered it on amazon, along with the 4th book in the Wheel of Time trilogy (gee, anyone who looks at my order is going to be a little confused I think.) We’ll see how it is, from my teacher and the reviewers it’s a pretty good comparison of different history textbooks and what they say about specific events. I find it hard to learn about what books might be interesting to me though…can be hard to wade through the piles of crap, especially when I’m jumping into an area where I haven’t really had much interest in the past.
I’ve rambled on long enough about this stuff, so I should probably get back to work.
All Studied Up
Oct 16th
I finished going through the rest of the study guide for my History Midterm on my lunch today. I think I’m all set for this thing.
Also, this was the first time I had brought my MacBook Pro to work in order to get some homework done. I expected to at least get a couple comments, but nothing. Oh well. Better for me since I want to avoid talking to people as much as humanly possible. I don’t need to hear how well somebody son is doing in science class simply because we’re around the same age. I DON’T KNOW YOUR SON! NOR DO I CARE IF HE JUST GOT A JOB AT WAL-MART!
Er, sorry…not sure what got into me there.
Studying Takes Too Long…
Oct 15th
I should have alloted more time for studying form my history midterm. Only got halfway through the worksheet. I’ll have to finish up the rest tomorrow.
The stuff I didn’t get to is the more recent things we just went over in class though, so I’m pretty sure I’ve got that stuff down. Bah to midterms!
Midterms (AKA Sucking The Fun Out Of The Weekend)
Oct 14th
I just remembered (thankfully) today that my history midterm is monday night. So I had to go put aside some time on sunday in order to study for it. I need to go through this large study sheet and identify a whole bunch of terms. I’m not real worried about how I’m going to do on the test, just the studying is the annoying part.
It could be worse…I could have completely forgotten about the test.
History? Interesting? IMPOSSIBLE!
Oct 8th
1776
I just finished David McCullough’s book 1776 (I had mentioned I bought it last week) and I really enjoyed it, surprisingly. Normally historical stuff isn’t my cup of tea, but I was completely sucked in by it.
I had never realized how lucky General Washington was and how thin the thread holding the continental army together was. It’s amazing the number of times that they escaped due to luck or quick thinking and how little they succeeded to start off with.
If you’re at all interested in the time period and haven’t read this book, you really should check it out. It’s very well written and worth the price of admission.
Historical Interest? Me? Freaky…
Oct 3rd
This is kinda an odd development for me so I figured I should share it here. In my US history class at college, we’re going over the revolutionary war and the creation of the Constitution and the other stuff happening in that time period. Previously, I’ve never been intensely interested in the time period beyond what they asked on the test that is. However, this time I’m seriously looking around for more information on what happened, and the theory behind the ideas in the Constitution, how the framers arrived at their decisions of what was and was not a good idea for a government. Also how the US gained Independence from Britain…
1776
I’m freaking myself out by doing this since this generally isn’t in my area of interest. Maybe it’s because this time I’m older and I’m suddenly realizing that not everything that was taught in even high school history classes was the true story of what happened.
I picked up David McCullough’s book 1776 last night, due to the rave reviews it’s gotten. So far it’s interesting. It tells the story of the revolutionary war from a perspective that I’m not all that famaliar with. We’ll see how it goes. I’m almost temped to buy another book which deals more with the creation of the Constitution.
It’s Been A Xenosaga Weekend
Sep 10th
Kos-Mos
So I bought Xenosaga III for the Playstation 2 Friday night. I’m now about 18 hours into the game and have been playing pretty much nonstop all weekend.
It’s pretty entertaining, and much better than the second one was. By Far. The combat system is pretty nice, the music is good, the story is pretty good so far.
About 8 hours in, there’s a cinematic action sequence that just ROCKS. I need to figure out how to rip that off the disc and onto my computer because I want to watch it again….and again…and again…
I played so much Xenosaga that I ended up forgetting about my History reading, which I’m taking a break from now.
Lets see, what else did I do this weekend? Hmm, well, I reinstalled windows on my desktop computer since I installed one too many Microsoft beta products on it and things were acting really funky. I’ve got everything all set up and going now (did it while playing Xenosaga earlier today…I’m obsessed)
Sigh…back to my history reading then…
Back From Class
Aug 28th
I’m back from my first day of class and I can now confirm that, yes, the teacher of my history class is my high school history teacher. Which is pretty cool, because I know he’s a great teacher and I can actually enjoy sitting in a room for 3 hours listening to him talk.
Also in my class was an old friend of mine from the video gamers club at the college. I hadn’t realized it was him (even after he insulted my unreal tournament skills). It took me about an hour to figure out where I’d seen him before. Oops. Made me feel really bad, considering I just kinda dissapeared on all of them last year, about the same time I made one of the largest freaking mistakes of my entire life. But I’d rather not go into that right now…those affected know what it is.
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