I guess I should really blog a bit more, just to get into the habit of putting my thoughts down. It seems a good idea, especially since I am interested in pursuing a PhD. Yesterday I spent some time reading about how to study history and about how to conduct a research. I learned how to conduct research in high school, but it has been many years, so a refresher was good. As for learning how to study history, no one ever really sat down to teach me how to study history. History books are so jammed packed with information that I get really caught up in the details and sometimes lose sight of the larger picture, so I thought that maybe I was missing a studying technique. Turns out that it is normal to read an article a few times before really grasping the ideas--what a relief! Before, I thought that I was just really dense or something!

It also turns out that I am not alone in how I conduct research. That is, I spend lots of time reading and collecting quotes and not as much time writing the paper. I hope that blogging and putting my thoughts down will become a habit so that I will become more prolific and fluent in my writing.

On another, but related note, I am leaning more towards studying history. I enjoy art history, but I am not sure if I want to analyze the development of art as much as I would like to learn about the culture of the Middle Ages. Right now I am thinking about magic and miracles in late antiquity. I think it might be a good and interesting topic for a dissertation too. The earlier period of the Middle Ages is the most intriguing for me since it is a period of great change. The development of Christianity defines the period we call the Middle Ages and a whole culture revolved around this religion. Apart from Egypt and her pyramids, I can't think of any other culture that devoted a unique and pervasive building type to religion as the Christian churches and cathedrals. Not only that, but these buildings formed the center of many new and growing towns and cities being established in Europe during that time. Like Egyptian culture (which I also find really interesting; I was thinking of becoming an Egyptologist at one time), it is a monumental culture that is intensely interesting to study no matter what the topic: religion, art, literature, music, history, etc.