Hello! I’m Leah Welch and I’m a sophomore this year. I’m a history major with minors in Religious Studies and Jewish Studies. In my free time, I like to cook/bake new things, read, get outside to hike or kayak, spend time with friends (nowadays over zoom for the most part), and play video games and/or board games with friends.
Week three and week four both look interesting to me! As a history major, I get excited to read primary sources. The week on narrative and scholarly communication also sound intriguing! It looks like we’ll be looking at websites and ways to publish information for internet users to access. Both the geospatial analysis and mapping week and the week on podcasting are intimidating to me. Podcasting sounds fun, but I’m not a huge fan of listening to my own voice.
I have a different relationship to online learning than most people I know. I actually took all my classes online throughout high school. It did teach me a lot about discipline, independence, and motivation. But I was really happy to be on campus last year and to have the discussions in the classroom. I enjoyed staying afterwards to talk with my professors. While I think my high school experience set me up well for college level courses, I do think that there’s something about being in the classroom that cannot be replicated online. There’s a certain energy and active learning experience that is only found in a physical room.
We are doing what we have to do at this point, of course, and I think we’re doing as well at it as we can. It does make this class feel more relevant and appropriate though! Historians should take advantage of the technology we have now, though it seems they can be reluctant to do so.
Hi Leah! It’s nice to learn more about you, and thank you for this thoughtful post. Given your interest in Jewish studies, have you met Dr. Kirsten Fermaglich in the history department? She specializes in Jewish history in the U.S. and is also a wonderful person! I highly recommend taking some classes with her, if you can!
It’s also interesting to read about your educational experience in an online setting; I would have to imagine that it requires incredible self time-management (something I struggle with constantly!). Although, I definitely agree with you that there are some things about classroom learning that cannot be replicated online. I hope that meeting via Zoom in this class will give students some structure and provide a space to interact and talk about our work at hand.
One day at a time! I look forward to hearing more from you!
Hi again, Professor!
I actually do know Professor Kirsten Fermaglich! I look her American Jewish History course last semester and enjoyed it a lot. She helped me do an honors project and I started working with her and Anthropology Professor Chantal Tetreault over the summer on assisting their research. We were lucky the research could be conducted over zoom/phone since they were doing oral interviews with the Jewish community in the Lansing area. She’s great though! You aren’t the first person who has told me I should take one of her classes. 🙂