[Personal Statement] Historical Methods Personal Statement (Made 2022 Fall Semester)

I personally consider history to be the world’s oldest, longest, and most complicated creative writing exercise, held together solely by documents of questionable validity which have only just barely become more credible in the modern era of video; in short, I see history as a story, not a set-in-stone factual account of anything. I can’t say that my opinion changed at all during this class, if anything my opinion became more solidified than before, as it would appear that I am not alone. What this class without a doubt did do is help me understand history behind this definition of mine, help me better understand the complexities of the academic discipline and scholarly field that I intend to further imbed myself in. History, much like any cooperative creative writing piece, has rules, this assists its definition as a discipline. These rules ensure that people do not make up information or purposefully misreport things, make reporting history simpler, more effective and more efficient, and allow for those who harm the discipline to be, well, disciplined. History can’t be made from nothing, it is a scholarly field, it must have something backing it up, and this comes in the form of, mostly, primary sources, sources as close as possible to when/what/where they are about, sources not altered by others to fit their narrative, pure sources, written by the time, of the time, in the time, often without the intent of them ever being made use of for historical research in the future. Secondary sources are those detached from the topic in some way, not necessarily untrustworthy but often having had the opportunity for biases to afflict them, processing primary sources into a narrative rather than leaving them plain and undefiled. It is the job of the historian to investigate these sources and follow them to answers and to fill in gaps of knowledge and to, when necessary, go out and find new knowledge, to brute force answers when already existing sources provide none, hunting down this or that, digging through piles of worthless words, all for a single glimmer of truth. It’s a thankless task and it’s far from an easy one.

Just like how one wouldn’t expect a science fiction author to be good at writing period drama rom-coms, one wouldn’t expect a feminist perspective focused historian to oft use the view of the sports historian. These different views, fields of historical scholarship, are the methods and the approaches historians take in telling their stories. Each unique, but often crossing paths with each other, they are legion and each one is meaningful and useful in its own way. Each sub-field, each way of research, each approach to understanding information, it colors a historian uniquely and through this class I came to understand my own approaches and methods, their benefits and drawbacks, and the approaches and methods of others. I came to understand how the differ and how they can be used to bolster each other, and in my using primary sources I found myself noticing exactly how I was interacting with them and was able to dance around that perspective to take glances at my sources from different angles, allowing me to more fully and accurately report on them.

History is a fragile thing, more an art than a science, and it is always being altered by new facts and new ideas, changing over time. History has a history of its own after all, it’s not a constant in this universe, unchanged and unchanging, it is fluid, and historiography describes the meta concept of history’s history, the story of the story. This is something else one must understand the concept and applications of to be a historian, and this is something else this class introduced me to and helped me excel with. It colored how I wrote what I’ve written for this class, how I’ve looked at history, the contexts I’ve approached it in, and it has made my writing all the better. And history is about writing. After all, what’s the point of knowing something new if you do not share it, if you leave it to rot in your mind and your mind alone.

The core of history, almost more than the hours of research and reading, the documents of our ancestors, is writing. One must document one’s findings, and while I went into this class knowing how to do that, this class helped me hone my craft further, and in the specific context of history rather than elsewhere. I cannot thank this class enough for helping me to understand history so much better, for enhancing my understanding and enjoyment of it, it truly has left an impression on me that will never die.