Day 3 was my Historiography class, so the class with the same professor who taught my genocide class. I’pm just repeating this so it adds context. Anyway, class began with a small quiz, I guess every class will start with these to both get attendance for class and also to test our reading comprehension to make sure we are doing the readings. It was quite literally two questions: what our name is and something that happened in the readings. This whole class was just related to what we had to read beforehand: a section from Stolen Focus: Why you Can’t Pay Attention and How to talk About Books you Haven’t Read. He assigned these so we are made aware of how to focus as we, as historians, need to do so to do our job well. On of the readings talked about focus and how people aren’t actually mentally equipped to handle “multitasking” and how when our brain turns its attention to another task it actually has to almost reorient itself for the new task. Even if it’s brief. This attention issue was mainly centred on technology, it was quite interesting. The second reading was about how to know about books even i y haven’t read them before; since we cannot read every book that exists we need the ability to locate a book within a larger category to talk about it (an example used in the book was how the author has never read Ulysses but can talk about it because he’s read the Odyssey). It was also about reading books selectively, instead of reading the whole text you can read the table of contents, the abstract, keywords, introduction, book reviews, etc. Funnily enough when my Professor was telling us about book reviews he brought up the reviews oof his own book and while most of them were positive I guess one of them was pretty bad because my Professor straight up called the reviewer and asshole. Anyway, we have to learn how to be a cultivated person.

Sorry if class was fairly uninteresting, in a few weeks Marxism will be discussed so that’ll make for a more engaging post. My discussion during office hours with this Professor might hold your attention. We mostly discussed the assignments for this class and personal issues (no life details of course). For this class here is a paper and a presentation. The paper can be on any topic, so a person or historical event are all good, the only thing is that it has to do with historiographical methods. I have to write about two books that cover the same topic but go about it in different ways, when he told me this my immediate thought was Timothy Snyder vs Grover Furr, I did not tell him this but I did ask if an academic taking down another’s work would be okay for this assignment and he said yes but we will have discuss it in depth. I don’t know if my paper will be on Snyder vs Furr but it was a thought I had. Maybe using Domenico Losurdo’s book on Stalin vs someone else’s? Those are the two ideas I have but they are not set in stone, this paper is the last assignment and is due in December. I just like to get ahead of the game.

Next I asked about the presentation because I was going to have a BIG problem with it. This presentation is supposed to be a group project, which means I have to work with others. I am not good at doing that. I am quite shy in real life and have major social anxiety. If anyone remembers from semester three I had to do a seminar which gave me horrible anxiety, same thing is happening here. How the group thing works is that he will post the books that we have to read (only the segments provided, not the entire text) and people will just pick which one they want to present about, being grouped with others who chose the same. When I expressed how unhappy I was with this group situation he did allow me to choose to do one on my own if I really want to, semi-special treatment but other students can receive the same if need be. He said I could choose a work and he would allow me, and only me, to present on it. One of the books is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and I told him I was interested in that one, he said that it was a Marxist perspective and I would probably do well, or something along those lines I can’t really remember. I told him “who’s to say” as I am very uncomfortable bing explicit in my enthusiasm for Marxism because god forbid I get a lecture or penalized. I’m trying not to make my professor’s hate me but it’s hard to keep a sweet disposition when I am always on alert. Last time I was slightly open and “excitable” I got that terrible email and it really ruined my outlook on university, at least here in Canada. With that I actually did ask him if we were going to have issues as I was still on edge from the last time we had a class together, I really needed to know, and he said “I hope not,” so really it’s just a me thing. During our discussion he described me as reticent. I had never heard that word before but when I looked it up I fear it is incredibly accurate. I feel bad because when I talk to him (after the email incident) I am incredibly monotone and stiff (except for that one time I cried, embarrassing) which I don’t want to be like but its what happens. Even when I was doing breathing exercises before entering his office I still had my metaphorical hackles raised.

When I got home I just could not stop thinking about this presentation, and when I do my anxiety spikes and I even shed a few tears. This is so stupid. I think I will do it alone since professor’s usually run solo, but group or not I am so fucking stressed… I might have to talk to him some more about it, not to waive it from my grade but just to give me tips or something.