History 150: Historical Inquiry 1
I took this class with Dr. Isaac during the Fall of 2019. This class mainly focused on ancient faith and how it flowed and changed throughout the years to become the main religions of today. This class also put an emphasis on what history is and how to learn and talk about different events like a true historian.
This class was extremely beneficial to me because it taught me the first steps to becoming a historian. Dr. Isaac is an amazing professor and I feel like he really pushed me out of my comfort zone when it came to writing and talking about history. During class, we would have fruitful discussions about history and in the end, I always felt like I learned more than just the facts. I always left this class feeling like I personally knew the people we had been discussing. In this class, we also focused on the people and events that are not always talked about. Theorizing about the motives of different ancient individuals and what actually happened, was the most interesting part for me.
I feel like I got a lot out of this class. Not only did I learn how to write like a historian and research like one, but I also put myself into history and tried to learn it from an ancient perspective. This way of thinking is really important for a future historian and I am really glad that I got to learn it all so early on in my college career.
A huge example of how I put myself into history, is through my final project for the class. Dr. Isaac challenged us all to quite literally put ourselves in history and write a creative essay about time traveling to any ancient period and to write like we are actually there and experiencing it all. This essay was a challenge for me because I am not the best creative writer. But, I really enjoyed how I was able to literally put myself in the ancient world and “see” everything not just as words in an old book, but with my own imagination.