Why Do You Study History

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Kelly Kuzminski Craft of the Historian 2/6/2012 Why Do You Study History? As a college student, I am commonly asked what my major is and what I want to pursue after I graduate. With a double major in biology and history, many people understand that studying the sciences would allow me to procure a respectable job somewhere but most cannot grasp my fascination with history or why I would want to pursue it. “History? Why do you study history?” Contrary to popular belief, history is not just reading textbooks or memorizing dates and names. True, it revolves a great deal around reading and knowing what happened on what date and by whom, but it has more substance than that. History is about people and how their lives were affected by change. I remember being in elementary school and enjoying the time spent learning history, though I did not enjoy it any more or less than my other studies. However, the full spectrum of my love for the subject did not reveal itself completely until I visited Gettysburg in the spring of 2000. I was a wide-eyed sixth-grader keen on leaving my hometown for my family’s Easter vacation. When I asked my father where we were headed, he told me Gettysburg. Gettysburg? What was that? I had never heard of the place before. When he told me it was the site of a Civil War battle, I became even more perplexed; I couldn’t remember exactly what that war was about or when it occurred. After we arrived, my family and I explored the battlefield and toured the visitor’s center. Within a few shorts hours of being in Gettysburg, I became fascinated with it. Something about the town and the battle itself sparked an interest in me that I’ve never been able to explain. This wasn’t just a place or event I had read in a history book; I was standing on the same ground these brave men would have stood on in July 1863 and was taking in what they would have

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