#my work life is a whole mess and I'm waaaaaay behind here

[lau-and-history]

01102020 - Successes

I think it is a rather good thing to start the new month with a few successes and I hope you do too! Yesterday I received the grades for the term papers I had handed in by August and which had not been graded yet. (I’m aware that success is such a big word but no alternative came to mind) I also want to use this opportunity to show you a little bit of what my studies look like. So here are my three little stories: 

“good”- Last year I wrote an essay about the French colonization attempt in Florida during the 16th century. Because I had to hand it in as part of the theory module, I tried to work out the “transnational” aspect of this attempt. This is important, because the French attempted to colonize land that had been already occupied by the Spaniards. Not to forget, that the land belonged to indigenous peoples who were still living there. So one has three different entities as agents, whos backgrounds need to be considered while looking at the situation. The situation ultimately ended whith the massacration of the French by the Spanish. While looking at the literature I found that there was a lack of taking all perspectives into account. Mostly, only two of those three parts were considered by historians, yet, all were driven by their own local and “international” interests. In my essay I tried to bring the literature and a few sources together to show that a “transnational” history would be possible to write.  Good is not really a grade, tho. Unfortunately, the lecturer hasn’t specified yet if it will be a 1,7 or 2,0 or 2,3. BUT I don’t really care, because getting a good grade in general is a huge thing here! The lecturer is a major asshole and taking this 90-minute-class weekly just worsend my anxiety. I never expected to even pass.  1,7: Another good grade, yay! And another essay. This one I have written about a regional history thing as part of last years 4-day-field trip to an archive. This one had been rather difficult to write, because the most interesting thing I found in the files handed to me, was about parochial vacancies during two different centuries. The problem was: there is no research about it. So I had to get creative to reach the requiered eight pages. Ultimately, I wrote about the role of the parish in ecclesiastical matters, namely parochial election and parochial vacancies. The first part of the essay I wrote about the election using only literature and the second one using only the sources from the archive. I found out that the parish assigned itself a way bigger role than the church was actually willing to give it, so they had to compromise. Later, in the 18th century, the church was integrated into the state, which made things a lot easier and more structured, but also completly took away the parish’s right to have a say. The successful thing about this essay, tho, is not the grade itself. It is the possibility to get it published. The two lecturers plan to publish a compilation including (some of? I’m not sure about the details) the essays written after the three field-trips (this was a recurring course, so they did this three times with different people). I already received feedback from one of them during office hours and he was already sure, that I would be one of the students they’d get back to as soon as they know more about the details! 

1,3: This, my friends, is a very good grade :D Some of you might remember my cursed term paper about the Thirty Years War, which I struggeled so, so much with. This is the result. I’m not actually in for “you have to work yourself to bits to succeed” but in this case the struggle really was worth it (please, don’t do that, it’s really not healthy and I do not recommend!) This term paper consisted on a theory part and a source part, where I applied the theories. The theory part itself was rather difficult to write, because A) I hate theories and wasn’t even sure I would get them right and B) because I took a risk by including a subchapter of just ranting about one of the historians, because his works are highly inconsistent in themselves. Apparently, that only showed how well I understood the theories. I concluded that the categorization of the war in only one category does not consider the different views that could be found in different parts of the society. But one might say that it ended with a cliffhanger.  This grade is not only a success because it is very good and the only other occasion where I got such a good grade was my Bachelor thesis, it is also a successe because it paves the way for my Master thesis. Up until now I only had an idea, but receiving such a grade encourages me to go with this idea. And it even shows that I might be onto something. 

I hope you enjoyed my three little tales! I would be more than happy to see some of your success stories, even if they only seem small to you, because no success is too small! :)