Our first day of class was Tuesday, August 25th, 2020. A seemingly simpler time. This class is my first class on Tuesdays so I left my room around 8:40am and came into Paley from the bell tower entrance. I sat in the second row on the left side of the classroom between Nick and Brittany. I remember taking in the room and noticing how spread out and isolated we all were. I also remember thinking that it would be harder than normal to remember who was in class and get to know everyone because of the masks and how spread out we were. Professor Whitaker walked in next.
Professor Whitaker, I actually was introduced to you before this class because I had Gary Scales as my professor for my Making American Society class and you came in to speak about your research on American society through Sesame Street. I was very interested in that project and was excited to learn that you would be teaching this class. I recall you sharing your policies for the year and being one of the only professors I had who made a point to talk about proper mask wearing and safety precautions that we should be taking as students not only on Temple’s campus but also as people living in Philadelphia. I recall going through the class introducing ourselves to one another and mentioning our name, pronouns, majors, and where we’re from. We may have also shared a fun fact but I am not sure.
We went through the syllabus and discussed how this class would be run. I was a little nervous to learn that we would have a semester long project but after hearing about the openness of it I became a little more excited than nervous. Mentioned in that first class was the shooting of Jacob Blake, as it took place two days prior. That incident was an example of something I was very interested in and had been paying attention to all throughout quarantine. At first I remember thinking about focusing on how the Coronavirus was similar to the Plague, as I had discussed in my English class second semester of last year, but then I thought about focusing on the social injustices that were brought to light during the Pandemic.
Lastly, I believe we briefly discussed history and time. I think we questioned what history is and how time plays into history. That was the end of Tuesday’s class and before we left you reminded us to not all scramble out of the room at once; keeping in mind that we were studying during a pandemic. We looked at this idea again on Thursday. Class opened with a PowerPoint presentation on what history is and how it is studied or defined differently. We then went around the room and shared what our thoughts were on the components of history and what it is. Professor Whitaker then wrote our ideas on the board and created a word cloud for our class that organized our thoughts into one big bubble.