#too bad i am probably not going to study medieval history. baby me would be horrified that i like 20th century more now

[alpinelogy]

top 5 animals

ask me my top 5 anything

Wonderful question :3c

Cats - specifically I mean housecats. They can be friendly but not overly so, they love their personal space, I too love my personal space. Also having a purring cat in your lap should be considered heaven

Tigers and the Felidae family at large - big kitties!! I know they are danger but if danger why friend shaped. Childhood stuffed animal is a white tiger, enough said about that

Otters - specifically river otters but that's very arbitrary mainly cause we have river otters here and this is a landlocked country. When I was little there was a tv show about a baby otter and I went mom I love them and the rest was history

Horses - hi yes I was in fact a horse girl as a little kid. I just think they're neat, what do you mean we managed to befriend these creatures several times our weight? I will not ask questions

Bunnies - they're fluffy. And cute. What's not to like about them

Yes the fluffier and/or cuter the animal is the more I love them thanks for asking. I am not immune to adorable creatures. And yes I had (have) stuffed animal for each of the aforementioned

[ta-ether]

So You Want to Study the Middle Ages

A Few Disclaimers: I am not a medievalist yet, but that is the path I’m on at the moment with goals to go to grad school for Medieval Studies. Also, this is mainly if you want to go into European Medieval Studies. I will only be limited help for outside of Europe, but I am more than willing to ask around for help if you want. Also this will probably best work for people going into college or already in college.

This sucker’s just over 4 pages with 12p Times New Roman and 1.15 spacing, so the rest of this is under the cut. 

My sweet summer child. You are in for a ride. Buckle up, because this is gonna be hard. (Not the best words to start out on but this is not for the faint of heart, trust me.)

First thing’s first. Choose a region. Just one. For me, it’s England. Now if you’re scared that choosing one region will not let you learn a lot about the general world at that time, you’re wrong. England interacts with France, who interacts with the Holy Roman Empire/ Germany, who interacts with Italy, and they all have contact with the Near East, and then they all interact with Iberia. And when I say “interact” I mean “fought.” Trust me, it will cascade, and if you don’t have a “home base” you will get far too overwhelmed.

This is where it goes into what I personally have done. After I chose England, I went into the Renaissance there – specifically Elizabeth I. It’s useful to start in the Renaissance because there’s more accessible knowledge about that period. I started super young, so I also read a lot of historical fiction at this point. This isn’t reliable for facts, but it’s not bad if you’re just starting out and want to dip your toe in the water.

From there I took a brief hiatus into Classics. This is helpful because with this you can go down from Classics and up from Renaissance and meet in the middle. Also this is the part where you’re going to want to learn at least a little bit of Latin. It’s honestly invaluable. I had the amazing fortune of taking Latin since 7th grade, but if you’re going into college, you can probably take the gen-ed requirement for language and you’ll be fine. You only need about 2 years of good Latin, because Medieval Latin is… how you say… not that complicated. The hard part is mostly the vocab, and you have dictionaries for that.

Now that you’ve made yourself at least familiar with Classics and the Renaissance, you can actually dive into the Middle Ages! Why don’t we do this earlier? Well I’ll tell you. There’s so much bullshit about the Medieval Period online, and even in books. Seriously, Sturgeon's Law is a THING with Medieval Studies online – 90-95% of what you find at first is going to be false. This is why you wait, so you don’t get bamboozled. Personally – I’d start with a “pop history” book. These are books that you can find in like, Barnes and Noble in the “History” section. Now, these books are not well regarded in the academic communities, but fuck em look, everybody needs to start somewhere. Personally, I read Dan Jones’ The Plantagenets super early in my “Medieval career” and it gave me an overview of the period and new places to look for things I was then interested in (The Anarchy!). Also, it had a family tree. Never underestimate the usefulness of a family tree.

So now you hopefully have a place you want to focus on, and also a rough time period, event, or person you want to focus on. Now, because academic books are expensive, you’re going to go to the primary sources, which are free online. You don’t need to panic! Primary sources are hard but not impossible, and I believe in you! You’re gonna go to the Medieval Sourcebook from Fordham and you’re going to poke around a little and look for your little niche. You don’t need to spend a ton of time on this. A day or two should suffice.

Once you’ve read some sources you should pretty much know if you still want to go into Medieval Studies. If you’re not having fun with the sources, you may want to reconsider. Trust me, from here on out if you don’t love it, you will not be having a good time. I respect your decision if you want to bow out. This is not for everybody.

If you had a blast with the sources, congrats! You’ll probably have fun with everything else. Maybe. Next you’re gonna go and look at the academic side of things. Don’t worry if you don’t have access to databases. You can survive – I know I did. My suggestion: go to Google Scholar and type in what you want to see and poke around. If you’re young, you may not understand their language, but that’s ok. You can learn. If you’re really into it, you can look at their sources and dig in further! Bibliographies and work cited’s are a fucking gold mine. Google Books can also be amazing and always check to see if they have a book you find. If the book’s old, archive.org might have it in full. So Google’s mostly free and easy to access, but you can also use JSTOR a limited amount. With a free account you can access 3 papers every 2 weeks or something. Yeah, it’s kinda bullshit but it’s not bad. If you’re scared of wasting your free papers on something you won’t like, feel free to message me and I can look for you as well, and download papers for you or something. I’m not an amazing resource, but I’m willing to be a resource.

I haven’t talked about libraries yet, which is so typical of me. Part of how I work is that I’m likely to check the internet and forget the library, which is stupid. Pro-tip: check the library. Always check the library. Your local library will probably not have academic books, but they might have databases. Look at your local library’s website to see if they have databases for patrons to use, and if you’re up to it, ask the librarians. This may be hard if you have social anxiety (trust me I know), but librarians are up there with teachers as being underrated, underpaid helpful people. 85% of them will be more than willing to help, and they might even ship a book in for you or something. If you can use them, do. Also, if you live in a college town and can physically get to the college library, you can look around there. If you’re local you should be able to check books out, but even if you can’t you should be able to look at the books there or make copies.

This basically marks the end of what you can do on your own, and believe me I wish you could do more without help, but the truth of the matter is to do anything further you’re going to need to go to college and take classes.

There are more schools with medieval programs than you think. Big schools, small schools, rural schools, city schools – I go to a super small rural women’s college and we have a MARS (Medieval and Renaissance Studies) program, but I’m pretty sure we’re an exception. Point is, you can find a school. From there I suggest you get in contact with a professor there and try to get a meeting with them, which is what I did. Try and wow them with your tenacity and what you’ve done already or something. If you can’t get a meeting, just email or perhaps call. (*shakes fist* Networking!) Then take some classes.

Once you take some classes and you still want to go into this… you have incredible fortitude. Congrats. Now, this is where I am now, so I can’t help beyond this, but I’ll tell you what I’ve been up to. This summer I was able to get an Summer Honors Research fellowship at my school where I am being paid to do my own research with my professor. I’m studying 14th century English Coroner Rolls, am learning Medieval Handwriting, and am beginning to work with actual Medieval documents. Seriously. I’m living the dream. (If you want pictures of my documents ASK ME I love showing them off they are my babies. My lovely, wonderful, unreadable babies.) In the coming years I am planning to try and get my ass to England.

Some words of encouragement: Look, it’s notoriously hard to get into Medieval Studies. It’s just not accessible and I hate that about it. You have to want it. You can’t wander into being a Medievalist. It’s hard and a slog and it’s so easy to be discouraged, and everyone will tell you that what you’re doing doesn’t matter, and somehow you have to just keep going.

I’m writing this essay with tips on how to get into Medieval Studies because I wish I had more guidance before I hit college. I was flying in the dark for a while, and I basically bumped into doing useful things by accident.

If you want to go into Medieval Studies, I want you to know that I’m rooting for you and if you’ve read this entire thing, you probably do want to try at least. Know that I have access to a pretty damn good college library with inter-library loan privileges, a scanner, and a really smart professor. If you need a book or an article and you don’t have the means to get it, please message or ask me. If you just need a place to start, ask me! If you’ve read this entire thing, message me. I love to talk Medieval with people and I have like… one person to talk to, and she’s my professor. I would include a list of books I read that were helpful, but this essay is starting to become a novella at this point so you can ask. I sound super lonely – “ask me, message me!” Ha! You would be right. I am lonely.

<3