Why are you here learning history? What are you doing this for? I have kept asking myself since I entered this university.

It is true that I have been in History Academy for 2 years, paradoxically, I had never thought about taking history as my subject. When I lost that final examination, I knew I have no choice and history in this university may be the most appropriate position for me and as my dad said, “You can learn what you like in your postgraduate grade…” So finally, I accepted the fact and came here.

Actually, I do not hate history; to some extent, I even could say that I like it. My dad has a large amount of history books including autography of those famous people in Chinese history or throughout the world, even though he is a mechanical engineer. Thus I got the opportunity to read different kinds of history books when I was a child and really threw myself into them.

However, what I have learned in my academy is totally different from my former understanding. It seems that we learn just for a paper or the qualification to enter its postgraduate academy straightly. We are searching for countless history archives and documents, looking for some details that have not been studied before and gaining a new theme for our papers. I concede that we can indeed improve ourselves from this work, but the problem is that most of us concentrate on the final result, only several pieces of paper, and ignore the miracles and truths behind those documents as well as looking down upon our personal particular understanding and expression of the abstract history.

I really get confused and frustrated with this situation. For me, I hope to get out of the library and archives, try my best to reach the places filled with memories of our ancestors, and listen to natives’ narratives about their own lives or including their predecessors in order to experience part of history by myself, see it with my own eyes, hear it with my own ears and get my own ideas. Not for my GPA, my graduate paper or something like that, just for the purpose of fulfilling my mind and remembering our human beings’ glory.

Maybe one day, I will get it.