A word about what we do

A word about what we do

Early in the term in all of my mid-level and upper-level history classes, I ask students what historians do. We make a list on a whiteboard, and the students get the big ideas up there: go to conferences, do research, write, and teach.

I have them break those down. What goes into going to a conference? There are proposals and presentations to write, slides to create, funding to secure, travel to undertake. Similarly, we talk about everything that goes into a research trip, from identifying archives and libraries that will be useful to us, to finding reasonably-priced places to stay. My students are generally great at identifying the big picture stuff – “You teach!” But it takes some drilling down to get to what that means: reading, prepping, planning, photocopying, making slides, classroom time, grading, office hours, and assessment.

Once the students get the idea we fill the board quickly. I encourage them think about the things that are so ordinary we tend to overlook them: cooking meals, walking the dog, doing the laundry. We talk about childcare and elder care, health, and paying the bills. When we’re done, they can see that being a historian is a complicated matter of juggling dozens of balls at a time.

A photo of hundreds of people juggling

And that’s when I point out that these are the circumstances under which historians produce the articles and books that the students will read that term. None will be perfect, I remind them, because every single one will be the best that someone was able to write given all their other responsibilities. There will be leads that authors were not able to chase given the time constraints of writing a book before tenure, for example, or archives they couldn’t search for lack of money to get there. There will be awkward paragraphs because the author was dealing with a sick child the morning they wrote that particular part of that particular chapter, or a copy-edit that was missed because the author was grading thirty papers until midnight the night before.

This exercise reminds my students that historians are human, with human fallibilities – and it strikes me that we could stand to remind ourselves of that from time to time.

I’m in the middle of a book project. I am acutely aware of everything I do not know – all the background I don’t yet have, the context I still have to build, the research I have to complete. I know the books that are gathering dust in my office while I’m away on a research trip and how long it will take to read them – and I know that when I do, a dozen more lines of inquiry will open up to me. I feel dwarfed by the scale of the work. I think about fall term hurtling toward me and I’m reminded of all the articles I want to read to alter the syllabi for my classes, the new approach to assignments I want to try, the way I’m going to alter my grading. I think of the dwindling weeks of summer and my service obligations once I return to school and it’s hard not to feel anxiety, if not outright panic.

But I’ve been through this before. I know that it’s normal. And I hope you know it’s normal, too.

We are none of us charged with creating the perfect manuscript – just the best one we can given the time, space, and energy given to us. That’s what I teach my students; it’s what we also need to teach ourselves.

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