I had one history prof in college who told us in the opening moments of his first class, that he didn’t really care about actual dates, and he’d never ask a date question on a test, which caused an audible sigh of relief in the room. He felt that knowing the CHRONOLOGY of events was better than the actual dates. It was one of the few insightful things I ever learned from a History professor.
Just yesterday there was a Jeopardy question about history, and I didn’t know the answer, but they gave a person’s name, and with that I was able to eliminate guesses that were after that person’s time. I didn’t know the exact dates of those eliminations, but I knew in general that they were after that person. That only left me with a few options left, and I wasn’t sure about one, so I guessed the other, and was right. It was an example of just knowing chronology was good enough.
Besides, if you need to lock down a strict fact like a date, we have a super computer in our pocket holding the entirety of human knowledge. Google it.
my history professor friend thought that if you could cork board and yarn it together, see what led to what and influence what, who cared if you got the dates slightly wrong. you had the tapestry and the big picture. you could get the letters and the individual stories. that’s history
Yeah, sometimes a date is important, and you end up remembering a lot of them anyway, but generally, just knowing the story is all you need, and that’s the fun part anyway.
Date Anxiety has kept more people from enjoying history than anything else.
I had one history prof in college who told us in the opening moments of his first class, that he didn’t really care about actual dates, and he’d never ask a date question on a test, which caused an audible sigh of relief in the room. He felt that knowing the CHRONOLOGY of events was better than the actual dates. It was one of the few insightful things I ever learned from a History professor.
Just yesterday there was a Jeopardy question about history, and I didn’t know the answer, but they gave a person’s name, and with that I was able to eliminate guesses that were after that person’s time. I didn’t know the exact dates of those eliminations, but I knew in general that they were after that person. That only left me with a few options left, and I wasn’t sure about one, so I guessed the other, and was right. It was an example of just knowing chronology was good enough.
Besides, if you need to lock down a strict fact like a date, we have a super computer in our pocket holding the entirety of human knowledge. Google it.
my history professor friend thought that if you could cork board and yarn it together, see what led to what and influence what, who cared if you got the dates slightly wrong. you had the tapestry and the big picture. you could get the letters and the individual stories. that’s history
Yeah, sometimes a date is important, and you end up remembering a lot of them anyway, but generally, just knowing the story is all you need, and that’s the fun part anyway.
Date Anxiety has kept more people from enjoying history than anything else.
woof tell me about it the hot chick in the front row in history 204?
edit: wait, she was in the center row in Industrial Design. Dear gods i don’t remember college At All. Those must have been good drugs back then.