History 222- US Hist 1877-Modern Times

I took history 222 my first semester of my freshman year. This was a class I really enjoyed, but at the same time disliked, because it was the first 8am that I had ever taken. Overall, the class went well and by the end of the semester getting up and going to class ready to learn got a little easier. Throughout this class we had three papers called a critical source analysis, which was a little challenging at first, as I had never really had to do anything like this before. In high school I had looked at sources and written a summary, but for this assignment I had to use two sources and talk about them together, while comparing and finding similarities between the two. I had to dig much deeper into these sources than I ever had to before. The first one that we did, which I am providing below, went pretty well and I did better than I thought I would. This one was on slavery and each of the readings were primary documents that were written by people during this time period. Each one that I did throughout the semester got a little easier and my grades on them improved. This taught me how to look deeper into readings that I have for every class, as the deeper you read the more that you can find to put into use in some way. I feel this class really improved my analytical skills which will be helpful throughout my college career. This class also taught me how to read primary sources in a more effective way, as we were taught to look at each paragraph individually, everything as a whole, and a variety of other techniques to use when looking at primary sources.