I was extremely excited about this class when I realized that the majority of work was going to be independent archive research. Even though I understood that the work would be intensive, the goal of the class was unique and thoroughly interesting. Overall, the knowledge I have gained from this semester has been well worth the hard effort. There are just a few things that could be improved to make this class more educationally valuable. Seeing as this is one of the first “archival” classes I have heard of at the College of Charleston, the spontaneous structure of the course was inevitable in a way. However, sometimes there is simply not enough time in a semester to get everything done. The reading assigned for this class was helpful, but took a lot of dedication. (The snow days most definitely interfered with the available time as well.) When we finally began our individual archive projects on colonial South Carolina, it seemed like the amount of days we had to complete the work was minimal. I think some of the books we read could have either been eliminated from the schedule, or perhaps we could have tried to finish our studies on them in a shorter time span. Thus, more time to work on these extraordinary projects would have been beneficial. I am not saying that the books we read were not intellectually valuable; I am proposing that if they were better organized into a semester’s time constraint we could have created an even more significant archive. On the other hand, I have learned quite a bit of history about not only South Carolina, but about other travel narratives and various ethnic cultures. It is important to keep in mind that since we were “guinea-pigs” sorta speak for this type of course, we were obligated to spend a great deal of time on clarifying certain details about our research. We also lost time in having to learn how to research at the SC Historical Society. Aside from these few minor revisions, this class has been an enjoyable and fascinating experience.
No comments yet.