U.S. Colonial History to 1877 was one of my favorite course I took since my time at Longwood University began because of the content and the professor who taught the class. The class taught me the importance of doing textbook readings and paying attention in class. During class the professor loved to ask a random student a question that pertained to the textbook or to something he had just gone over, so it made sure to keep me reading my textbook to ensure I was ready with the correct answer in case I was called on. The professor obviously had a passion for teaching and loved the material he taught as he made learning fun throwing in intriguing side stories and interesting fun facts. Also, the professor was very approachable and encouraged us to contact him outside of class if we had questions on a certain assignment or about something gone over in class. I ended up going to him several times throughout the semester to ask for help on assignments as I knew he wanted me to succeed and that he would help me to the best of his ability.

The assignment I chose as my artifact for this class was one of three issue papers I had to write for the class as I found these assignments to be quite fun and interesting. The objective of the assignment was to read an article composed by two authors who had two different opinions on a certain historical event and determine what made their arguments valid and invalid. Then at the end of the assignment we got to choose who we sided with more and why, providing information from the article to back our choice. I thought this was a nice assignment to allow us students to grow as intellectuals and form our own opinion that was entirely unguided by the teacher or other sources. It was fun to be able to write about several events of history and see how people viewed them differently and similarly.