I have been a fan of yours for less than a week. Five days ago a friend who is studying with me in Italy right now posted a video of yours, Crash Course World History: Rome. After having studied in Rome for five weeks, I knew a lot of the history you covered in your video, but it took me five weeks of stumbling through Roman cobblestone streets to learn what you said in approximately ten minutes. I haven't decided which way is better, but I think probably the stumbly way. Never the less your Rome Crash Course video caught my attention and I decided to watch more.
In the last five days I have watched every single Crash Course World History in order (minus Rome) to date. Being busy bounding around Italy during the days, this means the last several nights have been packed with history, and less packed with, like, sleeping. You have also cut into my reading time-- of Harry Potter in Italian and rereading Treasure Island. What I'm trying to say is your videos have taken over my life much in the same way Buffy the Vampire Slayer took over during freshman year of college.
Besides watching all the Crash Course World History videos, I have watched several of your vlogbrothers videos, including Hank's videos. The friend who introduced me to your videos informed me today that you guys have been at this video blogging thing for a while, but for some reason I missed the band wagon until now.
But what I'm really interested in is the Crash Course videos. You hooked me with history, man. I watched about 30 seconds of Hank's sciency show and he lost me in his sciency mathy thingys. But the history kills me. I have always been a history nerd. Admittedly, more of an American history nerd, but I never turned down an opportunity to learn about cool things dead guys (and girls) did.
I got into college thinking I was going to study history. The only problem is history is not incredibly applicable to the world unless you become a teacher, a researcher, or a writer of history. Instead I choose sociology because as everyone knows sociology is way more applicable, allowing you to be a teacher, a researcher, or a writer of sociology.
Anyway, I quickly found that everything I looked for in history, I found in sociology. Questions about how things work, why they work, and how they came to be entrenched in our lives is the end game of sociological research. And I found it to be much more broad in scope than history which focuses on political and religious climates of different time periods-- or at least when I took European history it always felt like someone was either dying/ killing/ marrying/ conquering for a political or religious reason. Sociology focuses on politics and religion, of course, but it also looks at the institution of education, family and gender dynamics, economic principles, etc, etc. I mean it covers EVERYTHING that involves
society.
And no one knows what sociology even is. I mean, even I didn't until I took my first class and said, hey, maybe if people knew all this stuff it would save the world. Everyone has an opinion about what is going to save the world. Knowledge about history is good, so we can attempt to avoid mistakes that have been made before-- but we know that is easier said than done-- look at how many people have tried to invade Russia. Knowledge about science is good, so we can attempt to make innovations in technology-- but we know that is easier said than done-- look at all the poopy things we've done to the environment via technological innovation. In my opinion, the thing that would save the world if everyone knew about it is sociology.
It's like psychology for the world. Sociology plops different societies on a big ol' metaphorical couch and whips out the sociological equivalent of Freudian theory. Sociology can diagnose almost any facet of a society. Why gender relations are set up the way they are 'here' in contrast to 'there'. Why deviance occurs and can actually be beneficial for a society. Why political and economic systems work for some peoples and not for others. If everyone knew about these things, maybe they would then have the tools to fix them.
This is where you come in. I think it would be really awesome (and I use this word very sparingly so you know I mean it) if your next "season" of Crash Course was about sociology. I mean, I don't know you, I didn't even know you existed until five days ago (which I hope you find refreshing, not insulting). I am an average, relatively healthy, upper-middle class woman in college, studying abroad in Italy right now. I have it pretty sweet; I am happy. In all honesty there is no reason to kowtow to my request, other than IT IS A REALLY GOOD IDEA. But that's just my opinion, and I write to you, via e-mail, and implore you to listen.
I know you don't reply to e-mails, I mean that's what you said on your website, but I hope you are honest about reading every word of them, even though I'm sure you get a lot. I hope you do read them, and I hope if you don't, you at least read mine. I would have tweeted to you, but 1) I still don't believe twitter is a real form of communication and 2) there is a word limit. I am in fact now following you as "duumshit" on twitter, and I will be posting this on my blog at www.duumshit.blogspot.com. Just so if you did want to reply via some other portal of communication you could...
I've never been good at sign-offs,
Kiera Peacock
P.S. I apologize for any grammatical errors, I've been speaking Italian for the last several weeks and my brain doesn't know what language it is in.
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