Introduction

Alexandra Fields

 

 

What you should know about me

I'm an 18 year old woman who absolutely loves life, family, friends, and (believe it or not) school and work. My passion is theatre and performing arts which leads to my dream of becoming a professional actress. I've been working since I was 14. I can't imagine not working, not learning, and not being involved in some sort of performing arts. Along with theatre, I enjoy modelling (no high fashion, because I'm too short) for things like photo shoots and hair shows. When I'm not super busy (which is pretty much never), I enjoy being with my family, and my adorable puppies: Buster (the yellow lab mix with a red tick hound, who is technically my sister-Lauren) and Coco (the poodle, who is technically mine). Oh, and they're much bigger now than in these pictures. 

 

And Now for History

I would define History as the retelling of the past. None of us can ever know if our "Facts" are 100% correct about anything, even about ourselves, and especially the past and history. Think about those memories you have about a time you met someone, your first kiss, and how many times you've thought about that one moment. When you repeatedly brought up this event in your mind, how many times did it change? I know for me, it's pretty much every time. Everyone knows about the telephone game, but no one really thinks that it happens with themselves. I've always had a difficult time learning history. It's hard for me to relate to it, honestly, and I just plain enjoy math, science, and literature more. Math and science I enjoy because you can get to an answer, or at least follow the right path. Literature, you just pick an opinion and stick to it. Easy enough. History, everyone thinks they are right, except for you. Most teachers in high school claimed to know everything. They don't. They weren't there. I love how college professors admit to not knowing everything and admit that even they have a personal bias. The most we can ever hope to achieve is to be presented or present the most true facts that we can about this thing we call history. I also have learned that for myself, I don't really like reading history textbooks. There are other textbooks I actually do like reading, just not history because they claim to know it all and be right. If I'm going to read about history, I prefer it to be intentionally fictional in nature while telling some historical data, then I at least know it's not perfect but trying to tell a story. I also prefer having someone just talking to me about history, like in museums or people telling me what they believe about a certain event. In this context, I actually find it more believable because they know they're not telling the 100% truth. When I first read the portion of the textbook, I wasn't really looking for instances where I could tell "this is an opinion" because I just believe a lot of textbooks are opinions. My HIS 1053 teacher today was telling us about a Mississippi textbook from the 1950s or so that said that most slaves were treated as princes. Ok, some were, but not enough to qualify as most. Therefore=opinion. But this is something that most of us have come to agree on. There are enough primary sources that show us otherwise. However, there are still many events that don't have that much documentation to prove our main "Fact" to be false, so we believe it. To comment on the statement: "History is an argument" I completely agree. Everyone is just trying to prove themselves right and everyone else wrong, even if they are wrong themselves. Historians I would qualify as being very prideful, and because of this pride, they are unwilling to compromise themselves for the truth. I must say now that there are some historians that admit to not knowing everything, aren't prideful, and do compromise themselves. This is simply my opinion. I think now that I've realized this, I might begin to enjoy history more, but probably only if I hear it told as just a story.