Where do I even begin. This class has taught me so much, not only through its fast-paced schedule, but through listening to my classmates and heeding their advice. I have learned time management and how to complete big, time-consuming projects and complete them before the deadline even with other life stuff going on. Yet, I also learned that sometimes it is okay to admit when things get too hectic in your personal life and you need a little bit more help with an assignment. I learned how to think analytically and will never look at digital historians in the same way. Every historian has a different way to approach their work and how they want to publish it on the web. But that is the beauty of creating one's own blog or website, you can change your tone with your blog posts or even change the theme of your website to fit what vibe you are going for.
I have also learned that although you can tell a story via a website or a personal blog, sometimes the best way to describe an event is through a timeline or a visual graph. Turning historical data sets into a visual graph or creation is not just for math, but can actually be very helpful for digital history as well.
Now, the classmates I had in this class were wonderful. We all came from diverse backgrounds and I always felt so supported by them. Everyone was truly rooting for each other's success, and I am very thankful that I received constructive criticism that was fair and not just downright mean. I am also thankful to my professor. Professor Evans is honestly the best history teacher I have ever had. I am not the best in history. Yet, no matter how nervous I was regarding an assignment, he was always there to support and encourage me. He is always open for a discussion if you need help on a subject, and I could not have asked for a better professor.
The only thing I wished this class did was a project that included an element of video creation such as via tiktok or youtube. I think it would be fun to make our own little historical videos, and tiktok especially can be used quite easily to gain a presence online. I even follow some digital historians who have used tiktok to help move them forward in their career. Thus, I think it would be really cool to establish our presence as a digital historian via tiktok as well. Overall, this class was such a blast, and I am honestly super excited to enroll in another history course with professor Evans.