United States History Since 1865

I took a general education course with my roommate in Winter Freshman year, History 202: “United States History Since 1865”, practically the first course we took together. We had technically both taken an elective in high school together, but that hardly counts; frankly, that was barely a class at all. Until that quarter, I had only taken two courses with one of my friends before—primary school notwithstanding. As such, we both sought to capitalize on the freedom afforded by university and the affront to that freedom that is freshman year, mandatory classes, and general education courses (which I think should be taken, but not really like this). Anyway, we settled on HIST 202 somehow, as it was a requirement we both needed to fill, with a professor (who I will call Arthur C. Clarke without any explanation) who seemed to be decent.

The first week of class was abruptly cancelled.

I can’t find the actual announcement, so I’ll just tell you what happened. We got an email from Clarke, telling us how he was sick and so the first week would have to be asynchronous, a la COVID-times. He was sick, apparently, so we could look to Canvas to see our readings and assignments for the week, we will reconvene in a week when he feels better. Pretty bog standard, but a nice start to the quarter as this freed up the early morning block, saving four precious hours for breakfast and general tomfoolery. So, on the first Monday of the term, my roommate and I belatedly woke, far too late to make an eight, and lounged about. At some point, one of us checked our email and found that class was not, in fact, canceled!

Turns out that the email everyone in HIST 202 got was not meant for us—it was from a few years prior. Clarke was a good sport about the whole thing—this is what he had to say about the matter:

I’ve been teaching at Cal Poly for 20 years, but this morning was a first. The message you received about “canceling” class and switching to an asynchronous format was from Winter 2023. When I copied the course content from the Winter 2023 shell to the Winter 2024 shell, I inadvertently copied the announcement and then it auto-sent. Worse, it wasn’t sent to me! So, I showed up this morning for class completely oblivious.

Given the mess this has created, we will just follow the plan outlined in the email sent by Canvas. Week 1 will be asynchronous. That means you have work, but the class will not meet.

Poor prof! I cannot imagine the anguish he must’ve felt waiting for however long in an empty classroom, waiting for over fifty students to show up before finally, incredulously, resigning himself to the idea that half a hundred independent students decided that his class was not worth attending, on the very first day alone.

So the first week passed online, and my roommate and I had basically not taken a class together still. Classes flipped by, in typical first year fashion—silently, wastefuly, oh-too-slowly—and the second week of the term rolled round, so we two sad saps stumbled out of bed early enough to show up to our first history class of the term. Clarke turned out to be a decent enough guy, not so self-serious while still being a rather good lecturer. He explained on that “first” day that part of the class ornamentation was to be group assignments, and we found our groups. I wasn’t with my roommate, but instead with these three people whose names I’ve totally forgotten and didn’t save as contacts: two who were completely irrelevant, and another just-as-irrelevant one who reminded me a bit of this kid I knew in second grade who was friends with a girl whose name I think was Emily. I forgot the boy’s name, so I’ll call him Emily’s friend. The history kid who looked like Emily’s friend (THKWLLEF, or Bob, for short—THKWLLEF goes to THe Killer, WiLLiam, ElF goes to William goes to Robert goes to Bob) was annoying—I distinctly remember Bob taking great pride in telling the group that he was a history major, and he always maintained un snidé visage—a permanent sneer which could be considered a distant cousin thrice removed from the sneer Benedict Cumberbatch often employed as Holmes in Sherlock (only the first three seasons are worth watching). I didn’t like him, but I didn’t have to like him since we didn’t have to do much in groups beyond a short assignment every week or so.

Anyway, my roommate and I ended up cutting class semi-frequently because it was early in the morning and Clarke posted slides or other lecture materials. I would either be betrayed by my group and get zero points for the assignment that week, or they’d let me know what to finish and I’d do that. My roommate’s group was more amenable to slackers so he got full marks for everything without any effort. Time passed slowly like this, until suddenly my roommate realized we were due for a midterm on Monday. It was someplace around Week 5, a perfectly serviceable time for a midterm in a 10 week term, but the presence of an exam in the middle of the term was still a somewhat foreign concept, and we hadn’t had the chance to have Clarke remind us during class…

Apparently, we were allowed only one index card for quotes from our two books (I didn’t know we had a book, let alone two), but we knew in advance the three possibilities for the essay prompt, and on the exam day itself, that would materialize to two prompts we could select from—essentially forcing everyone to prepare for two prompts and pick whichever one happened to be offered. This was reasonable enough, so my roommate and I spent Sunday night finding quotations from the (definitely not illegally sourced) PDFs on Canvas which comprised our two books. My final note card was far sparser than my roommates, as I had only stated on Sunday but he had gotten his theses and broad evidence checked by Clarke a few days ago during office hours.

Important aside: I learnt a few days ago, two years out, of some important details which occurred during my friend’s office hours escapade. It turns out that Clarke started a hot sauce company when he was in college, and had an unopened bottle from those spicy days, as well as a hot sauce poster—the impetus of this hot sauce inquiry from my roommate. The business went under some time ago it seemed, so that bottle may well be the last of the Clarke special, 1989: A Spice Odyssey hot sauces. End aside.

We ended up waking up late that Monday and burst into the classroom about five minutes late, after basically booking it across campus. We waltzed in to dead silence and were met immediately by 100 dead eyes staring at us. We both hurried to any empty seat; as I did, I couldn’t help but look up and down the classroom to see the same kind of test booklet sitting on everyone’s desk. I asked Clarke what that was about, to which he said that it was the required test booklet that you were to write the essay in, didn’t I remember? Seeing my immediate panic and confusion, he kindly allowed for lined paper to be used, so long as all pages were named and numbered, in addition to being stapled. I said a quick thank you, collected the prompt options, and promptly spent the next 90 or so minutes writing as fast as I could about the American Empire. Some poor sod walked in to the exam an hour late; he was met with considerably less excitement and enthusiasm as everyone’s wrists smarted from the excessive writing. He spoke in hushed tones to Clarke, trying to get a chance to take the full two hours for the essay at another date. I don’t remember if he was successful.

It ended up that my flatmate and I scored the two highest scores on the midterm—I got the high myself, a 92% (Low: 70%; Q1: 82%; Median: 85%; Q3: 86%; Max: well, you already know). From the scores you can see that this was an essay exam to begin with (nobody failed), but it is always nice to get top marks, even if a topping score was so low. Arthur C. Clarke had this to say about my essay:

Strong essay with a clear and supportable thesis that is connected to the examples. It scores on the high side of the rubrics above with the exception of “writing and mechanics.” Frankly, it’s really hard to read so I was a little unsure about a few parts. Part of the challenge with handwritten work.

I spent about a page on domineering conquest of Native American lands ante-bellum even though this was explicitly a post civil war class. See, the beautiful part of terrible handwriting is that it is up to interpretation—so if you have a generous reader, the arguments you make are suddenly overwhelming and well sourced, with some points docked for mechanics, of course. It was glorious. There were history majors in this class, kids who were going to be doing this for quarters upon end—okay fine, maybe not this exactly, and not to this degree of laxness or such, but something like this. And we trounced them. It felt so good that neither of us went to basically any lectures in the second half of the term. Hey, why should we? We crushed the exam without really attending class heretofore, therefore attendance was strictly not needed.

We both essentially aced the class, with dropped marks mainly in anything attendance adjacent—me more so then him, since my group wasn’t so kind to delinquents—and great (though not topping) scores in the final as well. We did the math at some point, and I think we only attended some 20% of class, thus saving some thirty hours—thirty hours promptly spent on lazing around reading, eating, socializing, and such. I learnt a lot about college from this class, but not much history.

To date, my roommate and I still basically haven’t taken a class together.

C’est la vie, je suppose.