Introduction to a History Nerd

Myself  Personal photo taken by my mother

My name is Carol Brockmann. I am a junior, that is hoping for a classics major when I graduate. I love classics. It gives me an opportunity to go back into the past and see just how much history and the beliefs of others have impacted our world today. For me, it is important to remember what came before, because it those beliefs and cultures that shape modern society. Too many people forget just how important understanding history is. It is more than just stories of a time long ago, it is the modern world’s bloodline. The classic major allows me to go back and understand the roots of the western world.

Last semester was my first semester at OU, I had transferred from a smaller college in Kansas. I have to say, OU knows how to bring out the welcome mat. I cannot chose a single class from last semester that was the best, simply because I enjoyed them all. However, there were two classes that had a major impact on me. The first was Death, Dying and Religion taught by Marie Dallam. This was a class that truly challenged me to think outside the norm. Though the class got a little morbid at times, it was fascinating to look at the different ways death was thought about and the variety of different ways across the world of respecting the dead. It was a class that forced me to have an opinion about death and all that surrounds it while also upholding my own beliefs in the face of others disagreements. The other class I loved was Introduction to Latin, taught by John Hansen. This was the first class in many years that challenged me. It forced me to apply myself, by making me go beyond simple compression and recollection. It did not help that I am terrible with languages. On the upside now I a much better speller (I was horrible before).

 A little more about myself. I am one of the few people my age (that I know personally) that can remember 9/11. It was my fifth birthday and I remember watching it live on the television with my brothers just after I had unwrapped presents. I have two brothers, no sisters sadly. My older brother, Chalres,  is currently in the Navy, stationed at Charleston, South Carolina. I spent most of my winter break with him, enjoying his company (I had not seen him in almost two years) and sightseeing the beautiful city.

Charles Brockmann Personal Photo by me

My “younger” brother, Brice, is currently attending West Texas A&M. I say younger because I am only older by a few minutes. We are fraternal twins, born September 11, 1996- which makes us 20 now. I will be glad to get away from him when school starts.

Brice Brockmann Personal Photo by me

My mother’s greatest goals when raising my brothers and me was to make us avid readers and not to make us food snobs. To the former she succeeded. As evidenced by our many books and that whenever we go shopping there is always a bookstore to visit. To the later, she failed spectacularly. Home cooked meals have solidified my expectation of wonderful food. Nothing prefab is particularly appetizing, there must be flavor, and now I am very particular about how any form of meat should be cooked. Both my brothers and me are food snobs, and proud of it. I cannot say I have any favorite genre of music. I love anything from classical to rock, with the exception of most rap and all of county music. Though at the moment I do have a delightful ear worm. Same goes for books, I read far too many to narrow it down enough. There are two authors that have influenced me in how I write, Jack London and Edger Allen Poe.

                       

Edger Allen Poe Daguerreotype
by Edwin H Manchester
Wikimedia Commons

Young Jack London
Wikimedia Commons

I probably grew up reading these authors alongside Grimm’s Fairy Tales. IT is from them that I draw my inspiration for both topics and writing style. In my free time I love to read. Nine times out of ten when people see me around my noise is either suck in a book or I am listing to an audio book. Most recently, I have been stuck on a series introduced to me by my mother called Outlander. Unfortunately, I have not had much time to read them, as they are very long books. 

Cover of the first book in the series
more information here

When I am not reading I love to paint. Not on canvas but on glass jars. My typical project will take over 5 hours to finish, at the very least.

Personal photo

painted mason jar

taken by me

Personal photo

painted Kracken Bottle

taken by me

When I graduate from OU, I hope to go back to school and eventually get my Ph.D. Mostly though, I want to research, studying and learning is my lifetime goal. I want to be able to teach people about the worlds that made the one we have today. Not just history lessons about events, but who those people were, what they believed, how they acted. I want to know just how much a system of belief, like those of the Romans or Nordic, impacted and remain active in today’s culture. My biggest goal is to prove history is still important because of its continuing influence in contemporary beliefs.

I am looking forward to this class for that very reason. So far, it seems like the perfect combination of mythology and fairy-tales, those stores that help make up the past, and modern thought processes.