16 years later but finally getting somewhere

Nuremberg Castle, Bavaria, Germany

Hello all,

Again, names John Cadena. For the majority of my life, I have lived in San Antonio. Most of my life, on the west and southside. In 2002 I graduated from McCollum High School (Go Cowboys). Immediately after graduating I enrolled at San Antonio College for summer classes and quickly learned that I was no-where near ready for college. Discouraged by this I decided to follow in my family’s footsteps and joined the military. While in the Army I continued college at the University of Maryland Europe, Cochise College in Arizona, and San Antonio College, finally completing my undergraduate at the University of Incarnate Word.  My interest in Public history primarily stems from my feeling of always enjoying history more when given the opportunity to experience it in living reality. Recounting my years in high school, I can remember that I’ve always loved history but never felt connected to it. For me, all this changed when I was in Europe, Germany to be exact. During this time, with the help of local friends, I was able to walk, stand, breath, and lay in places of historical significance. For me, this is when I realized the importance that physical history has on an individual, culminating in my excitement in learning of the introduction of this program.

The Van Hoy Interlude

Photo of Dr. Teresa Van Hoy visiting the St. Mary’s University Public History program!

Having Dr. Van Hoy visit today was a great way to re-awaken an interest in history that has been dormant for a few years. She brought in a great perspective to the class by sharing some great stories and personal testimony about her time as a historian. Dr. Van Hoy helped bring together the history that we are making now with the history from the past. Danielle, a fellow student in the course, was a main source of interest for this visit.

Danielle Garza featured in the “Faces and Voices of History” article

Dr. Van Hoy spoke to us about her previous experience with the history department and how she was able to include her experiences from her history as a student to her future experiences as a future public historian. We ended our visit with Dr. Van Hoy by taking some shots that we can later include on our curriculum vitae and LinkedIn profile. Hopefully we can continue to bring these shared experiences into the classroom. I know they can definitely share some insight and theory to the history that we will be contributing to in regards to this program.

I’ve included some photos with this post. I plan on using my art of photography within this field as we progress into other areas of history. I think that using the areas of “expertise” in your favor is extremely important. “You will all bring something different table in this program,” Dr. Van Hoy stated, and I completely agree with this. Dr. Wieck has made it clear that her expertise that intersects history and technology shows in her work and we should be able to intertwine these trainings and previous works within out time in this program.

Discussing these topics and ways to loop into the public history we are learning was a great way to shed some light on the possibility of what work we can do on a local and state level as well as a national level.

Now let’s just stay on this with the same momentum and we’ll see what happens!

Stay tuned!!!

 

 

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