u/HarvardMan1636

Not saying he’s a historian. He’d be the first to laugh at that. He gets stuff wrong, half of it’s on purpose for the bit.

But think about how many people have gone down a civil war, WWI or WW2 rabbit hole because of a Gillis bit or him and the boys riffing on some general or some insane historical moment. Shane makes it feel like the coolest story ever told instead of something you got quizzed on in 10th grade and forgot.

Ken Burns did the same thing for boomers with the Civil War doc. Nobody calls Burns a historian either but he probably got more people to care about that war than every professor combined. Same energy.

Feels like the people who make history fun are doing something the serious academics literally can’t do — they get people in the door, then the academics take it from there. Both matter.

PLC holder here, about to walk into proseminar — how brutal is SSCI 100b really?

I keep hearing horror stories, so let me just say where I’m coming from. I’m not planning to coast. My whole approach is to actually wrestle with the readings instead of skimming for the gist: pulling direct quotes, mapping out what each author is actually claiming, and hunting for the gaps in their arguments to chase down. That’s the part that excites me — finding the seam where the logic gets thin and pulling on it.

So the real question: is that what instructors here actually want, or do they care more about something else? For those who’ve taken 100b — what separated the people who thrived from the people who got eaten alive? Is it the volume of reading, the writing, the discussion participation, or just learning to think at the graduate level?

Trying to prove I belong in grad-level work and not just survive it. Tell me what I’m walking into.