HIST 390 Goals

I was a bit apprehensive when I saw that Mason had an IT requirement. Growing up in an extremely rural state, technology was never emphasized in school curriculum. Those types of classes weren’t even offered at most public or private schools. Studying that subject matter just wasn’t the norm. It was as distant of a concept as philosophy or quantum mechanics, just not something that the general population was educated on. Therefore, given my background, my goals for HIST 390 are the following;

1. Create a functional website – The key word in this goal is functional. Creating a website is one thing, but creating a functional one that isn’t obviously made by a struggling college student, that’s going to be difficult.
2. Understand the concept of a domain and a website – I may own a domain but that does not mean I understand what a domain is. I only know that I have one and that I can type things in this little box and they will hypothetically appear on my website. My website that I can’t find online no matter what buttons I click. What is the difference between a website and a domain? What is a domain? What is a website? Hopefully I will be able to answer all of these questions by the end of the semester.
3. Remember something – As is often the case with Mason Core classes, once the class is passed then all of the information learned quickly exits the students brain. The class itself feels like a distant memory even if it was only two months ago and everything the student desperately studied at 2am in the morning is forgotten. With this class, I aim to remember at least one thing. One concept. I want to come back to this website in a year and remember what I was even writing about.

These goals may seem like I am setting a low bar, but I can assure you that I am not. If I can only achieve two of these goals, I will feel victorious.