I must be crazy…
…but as it is, I am considering a master’s degree in history. Yes! Last semester I would say almost every day how yeah, I’d get a master’s degree, but NOT in history, no siree, not EVAH. But now, I kinda want to. I’ve even got some possible thesis subjects on my mind.
This whole change came because of one thing: I moved on from the lower level history-of-everything classes, on to the more specialised ones, where you don’t have to know EVERYTHING within a given time period (seriously, antiquity AND the middle ages? Those are a lot of years to cover.), but rather delve more deeply into a subject (more or less) of your own choosing. Obviously you have to pick from the available classes, but we have a pretty diverse group of classes to choose from. I went with history of work and daily life (HWDL), and history of technology (HT). So far, work and daily life is the best. Really. The professor is so nice, and the group is small. This is also true for history of technology, but I don’t know, for now I just feel more connected to HWDL. Our term paper subject is also a good one: Write a historically angled text about changes that have happened in a field concerning one or more groups of people, as related to work and/or daily life. Meaning? Write about almost anything, as long as it’s well researched and well written. AWE-SOME. I’m probably writing mine about the changes in work and daily life for women over the span of two generations - the first generation being my grandmother’s, the second being my mom’s. We have to find the majority of our literature/other sources from outside the course books, and he mentioned interviews as being one of the possible sources. So I’m going to interview my mom, about her life as a girl and more or less up to now, and about my grandmother’s life. I do wish my grandmother was still alive so that I could interview her directly, but that’s life. Also, my mom said that had grandma still been alive now, her memories would probably have been rather jumbled anyway.
The term paper for history of technology has yet to be given out, but apparently they’re not looking for run of the mill, straight outta the books, this-is-what-I-think-my-professor-wants-to-hear kind of stuff, but rather a more daring paper where we speak our own minds about whatever the topic is, and throw out thoughts and ideas that might seem far fetched. Both professors have specified that they don’t want us to just KNOW the facts and recite what’s been written by others, but that we think, and form our own thoughts, and as long as we can back them up with good arguments - based on our readings, and/or other sources - we can’t go much wrong. I love this. I love it when there is no right and wrong, where I can just let my thoughts spin a web of their own. It’s what I excel at. I’m so much better at that than with spewing out years and names and causes of wars. I like thinking. I like speculating. I like arguing points that the standard history books won’t, because it might take up a whole chapter just to explain it all.
This semester is going to be great. I can’t wait!
This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 21:50. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 27th, 2010 at 00:24
Jeg tar master i musikk fra høsten av så vi er gale begge to :D
Ithilme’s last blog post..Innbrudd i natt!