Necessity's Yoke

I'm back to writing out of boredom, and it seems that it's already been about two weeks since my last post. Time sure flies when you're doing jack-shit nothing. Tomorrow I begin the first of six weeks of language courses (I'll be taking French and German concurrently), so I should be able to enter some sort of routine, although it's not likely to be similar to any routine that I've encountered thus far. I don't expect the amount of time that I'll have to put in to homework will rival my last semester of university, although I do expect that I will unintentionally blur both languages into a language I will call "Freutsch." My classes will take up three hours each evening, from Monday-Thursday. On the one hand, I'll have the daylight hours free, but on the other anything I do during that time must necessarily end by the beginning of class. I'm used to the end of work beginning my leisure time, not the end of leisure time beginning my work. This will take some getting used to. Socializing outside of class will be difficult during those days, not that I expect a great many things to happen during a time which is the work-week for most people anyway. The good news is that language is like crack to me, and I thrive if I can concentrate all my effort on it. I have already had two classes of German so far this summer, and I feel I'm progressing much faster now than I ever did when I took courses during the regular school year. The instruction is purely in German, which is useful for submerging the student in the language and discouraging use of their native tongue. I imagine French will be less intense, if only because I'll be taking it at a lower level than German. I also expect that there will be people in my French class that are closer to me in age. Those taking German with me through the institute are all quite a bit older. At any rate, I'll find out tomorrow evening. Gute Nacht und/et bonne nuit.

Completion

After a three-month hiatus, I am posting once more. Today I completed the final exam of my undergraduate degree, and I feel no different. Likely the reason for this is that I'll be taking concurrent French and German courses this summer, and I'll return to Carleton for my MA in the fall. With five years of university under my belt, this is the only year that I feel I've kept up a consistent work ethic. Jeff is right when he says that the amount work required to keep an A average is exponentially more than what is needed for a B. I essentially have the next week off, until my German courses start on the fifth, so I intend to become a sediment. I'll be interested to see how long I'm able to keep up my non-workery, as I think an academic juggernaut such as this I've created will resist down time with all kinds of ferocity. I expect I'll be back into the Greek in a few days, with a new cell phone to boot. Awesome. Next time I'll write an entry that is less reminiscent of a diary of a 12 year old girl, as diaries are totally gay. For men, anyway.

Historical Hindsight: Throwing out the Baby with the Bathwater

My posts seem to attract greater readership if I post them on Facebook as well as here. For long articles, I intend to do both from now on.
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In the discipline of history, hindsight is something of a problem. I mean, one can argue that the writing of history can never be objective, and that there are only different versions of history, no absolute Total History. That said, the historian must always be aware that he or she can be influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the way that a given event unrolled itself in the course of history. One must do the best that they can to try to live in the moment of the event that one is researching, and not tend towards later views of the subject.

For example, during one of my fourth-year seminars, the majority of the class was incredulous as to why much of Europe would appease Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Well, the answer isn't so difficult, but we have to shed our knowledge of what followed, and this is difficult for many people. People in 1935 didn't know that a Second World War was coming, and the same is true of the Holocaust. What people were afraid of in 1935 was revolution, being a time of economic depression, and the major enemy in this respect was the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany for its flaws, seemed like an excellent counter to this threat. We also must remember, when Germany did begin to emerge as a threat, the effect which the Great War had on public opinion and rearmament.

My point is, one must try to be as objective as possible when dealing with historical events. To project a present belief into the past is called anachronism. This is one of my major issues with feminist historians, at least the ones that look for oppression wherever they can find it. I'm not saying that oppression didn't exist, I'm just saying that it's easy to find it, if that's what you want to find. This is not good history. We should look at the information and then decide, not the other way around. Now on to tarring with the same brush.

"Fan of social healthcare? Congratulations, you are also against assault weapons." - Jon Stewart

It happens, but it doesn't have to. I'll be brief; being interested in people like Joseph Stalin doesn't mean that you favor totalitarian governments or work camps. Don't confuse a historian with their research matter. Enough said.

I'm wearing a vest

I'm also in the midst of applying for grad school. I remember the stress that seemed to grip most of the fourth-year students last year, and I can thankfully say that they overhyped it. Or not. Since I'm only applying to the same university that I've attended for the last five years, maybe I have a locational advantage that they lacked. That is, I don't have to deal with mailing times. Nice. My references are in order, and all I have to do now is fill out some paperwork, make up to three trips to collect some more paperwork, divide the resulting mountain of paperwork into two packages, and drop it all off at the respective drop-off points before February 1. I'm relieved to be out of the virtual and error-prone world of post-grad internet registry, hopefully for good. This whole process is not as incredibly stressful as I would have thought, although maybe that's because I've been through the OGS and CGS processes already, processes that actually require more effort than applying to grad school, and slightly less effort than bench-pressing the continent of Asia. At any rate, hopefully I can finish up my grad work by the end of this week. Cheers.