Befitting the topic of this article, I'd like to begin with a look into the past...my past, to be specific. I know, I'm hardly somebody you'd describe as an interesting person, but luckily, that shouldn't be a problem for this article.

See, in the golden days of my youth, I wasn't exactly an 'academic.' Sure, I still enjoyed thinking and using my imagination, but I didn't exactly have the ambition or desire to make use of my mental capacity. As a consequence, I had a mindset that plenty of people today share: I viewed history as solely a "school" subject. By this, I mean that history was something that only had relevance within the classroom walls, with no outside application. Even though I was horrible at them, I viewed math and science as being something that people clearly used, while history never hit me with that same sense of relevance.

I never had a hard time in history, hell, I was pretty damn good at it. From middle school onward, I had amazing teachers, such as the great and mighty Ian McCoog, that I retained plenty of information from, and by the end of my sophomore year, I realized just how much I liked history.

Then came my junior year of high school, when I realized "Hey, I haven't gotten anything less than an A in History for all of my high school career, why not take AP European History?"

That single thought led to a trail of discoveries about myself, my passions, and the world, that would only expand as I grew older.

That year, in a small classroom setting of roughly 15 students, I took AP European History and was shocked at the excitement that the class brought to me. Taught by Jerid Lindemuth, a man out of legend with a coal region accent to make the angels weep, I was exposed to a whole brand of history that refreshed me from the U.S. history courses that I had taken each previous year in high school. It was in this course that I first learned how the ideas of European society would become embedded in the framework of the United States through the works of men such as John Locke. It was in this course that an objective, yet interested, perspective of history became a part of my skill set, a departure from the near-perfect view on U.S. history that high school history courses often fall prey to. European history was so much more enriching to learn about, and I was now certain that history was more to me than just a graduation requirement.

Besides just piquing my interest in the happenings of the past, my study of history has honed my skills as an analyzer and writer on a level comparable to the skills of an English major, especially once I started my first semester of college. I remember shaking when I saw my schedule for my first semester of college. There it was, clear as day:

European History 800-1648

A class on European history in college? Seemed decent. A class on medieval history in college? I was nearly breathless. However, despite my giddiness and fascination for the subject, from day one of the class I had realized that studying history was going to be more than memorizing dates and sounding really smart in front of people. Hell, the first two weeks of the course made Dante's time in Inferno look like a cakewalk.

Because now, I had to do something I never was able to do when I was younger: I had to apply my passion for thinking. I soon found out just how expansive and complex the structure of medieval society was after the fall of the Roman Empire in 410 (see, that's an example of sounding smart in front of people). The border divisions of Europe today were extremely far-off from those of the past, something which I already knew, yet I soon learned was amplified further in this period. Societies were fragmenting and unifying more than I could expect myself to remember. I was certainly happy to now see how the modern connotations of medieval society came about, but still, a part of me felt as though I wasn't fit to study history.

Luckily, I had a professor with a righteous goatee who seemed to realize this as an issue for students, and structured our class as a discussion-based course in which every class felt more like a debate of the past rather than just two hours of memorization. I was able to express my feelings about what I studied and learned to argue my points in a setting where my input was actually valued, both by my professor and the rest of the class. The weekly writing assignments served a dual-role: giving me the memorization of the past that I sought, while still forcing me to come to terms with what I learned in a fluid manner that I could express in writing.

All of this in my first semester of college? I still get chills thinking about what comes next.

I was certainly in for a rude awakening when I started my study of history to the point where I felt as though I was incapable of carrying out my study of the subject. But, through the guidance of a professor who personally cared about my understanding of the course, as well as the applicable skill set I obtained in high school history and college, it was clear to me that thinking of history as a useless subject whose limits extend only to the classroom door was simply untrue. There's so much more to studying the past than memorizing dates and knowing facts: it's the immersion of oneself within the expanse of human existence.

And I think that's pretty damn useful.