Family History

Reading through the chapter it made me really think about who I am. Where did my ancestors come from? What kind of jobs did they have and what kind of environment did they live in. My heritage includes Norwegian and Irish mainly, then we have bits of German and Polish.

I've always had a fascination with Ireland. Never really knew why, just felt as though I was drawn to that country. When I was older and I could understand more things I thought it was awesome that I was part Irish. Ireland just seems like one of those places that would be interesting to live in. The landscapes are beautiful and the people there seem as though they would be the nicest people in the entire world.

I feel it is really important for us to know as much as possible about ourselves so that we wont be quick to judge other cultures. If we are unaware of who we are as a culture, then we may be more quick to judge what other cultures do. we might find it weird that one culture doesn't recognize Christmas. If we are not sure why we even celebrate it, then what makes it ok for us to judge that culture that doesn't celebrate it.

Like the book says, a lot of times our family history is not written down, but rather told through stories to generation to generation. Our family history is unique to us, but to other people, our personal family history may be boring. A person's family history occurs at the same time as other people's history/ our countries history.

It's also important to know about our family history because of medical purposes. Think of all of the lives that may be saved if we were able to track down our families medical record and see what kind of diseases were in our blood line. We might be able to treat these disease early on. Or even test a person for them early enough where they could possibly be cured.

Not only is it important to learn about our families history, but also to learn about our countries history. Mostly, we learn about the good that happened in our nation. But it is also important to learn about the bad things that have happened so that way we can learn from the mistakes that we made. Hopefully, learning from these mistakes, we wont make them again.

The only time I remember learning about another culture was in the Spanish class and in my Comparative Religions class. There really isn't that many classes out there that teach you about other cultures. If there were, I think there would be less stereotyping and less stupidity. If you really think about it there are many different types of histories out there. Not only does it have to deal with our countries history, but also with our society and what everyone has gone through such as sexual orientation histories, racial and ethnic histories, etc.

History is so interesting to us, yet it is so difficult to find records about our family. And often they aren't willing to give us records. It kind of makes you wonder how difficult it will be for future generations to figure out about their ancestry...