History Interests
One thing that has always really interested me about history is linguistic history, specifically the history of phrases and idioms. When I was in middle or high school, I remember reading a chain email that contained the supposed history of several phrases such as “graveyard shift” and “raining cats and dogs.” I have no idea if these histories were accurate (though they made sense) but it’s definitely something I’d like to learn more about. I’d like to find out if the origins of the phrases I read about are true, and learn the stories of others.
As a child and young adult, my mom used to tell me about the computer games she played when computers and electronic gaming were still a new commodity. She’s particularly fond of telling me about one game she played where she typed specific commands for the character in order to eventually solve a mystery. These games actually sounded pretty cool to me (kind of like Nancy Drew) and it got me thinking about the evolution of video games throughout the past few decades, so this is something else that I’d like to learn more about, especially since I have a close friend who’s in her senior year of her computer game design degree.
For my eighteenth birthday, my parents bought me a one-year subscription to Ancestry.com, where I diligently spent a year tracking my family history. I learned the exact year my ancestors immigrated to the US (1620) and viewed census records to discover the address of the house my grandfather grew up in so that we could visit it in the town where he was born. I learned a ton about my family history until my subscription ran out. This isn’t something I’m sure I’d like to pursue further because I feel like I already know a lot about, but there are definitely some specifics that interest me and would be really cool to learn about.
Obviously these aren’t my only history interests but they’re some that I’m really into right now!
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