MemoryArchive Beginnings, Fall 2005, by John Gerard Tetel
From MemoryArchive
Who: John Gerard Tetel What: The Start of memoryarchive.org When: Fall 2005 Where: Washington, DC
It was first semester of my senior year at American University and the first time I had ever taken an 8:10 block class. I have to admit I was fairly concerned with not getting out until 11:00. When we left the room well before 11:00 I was still concerned, but for a different reason.
I had originally taken what was supposed to be a Russian history class because as a history major, it was required and I really enjoyed the Russian history class I took the fall before with Professor Lohr. Apparently he was one of Professor Poe’s old students and since we used Poe’s textbook throughout the semester, Lohr invited him to come speak to us and let us ask him questions. It was probably the most entertaining class that semester. Lohr is a spunky shorter fellow and Poe is very tall and slower to react. It was one of the greatest intellectual sparing matches I had ever seen. It seemed like Lohr kept taking small jabs at Poe, but Poe effortlessly defended his position well. I was quite enthused about taking Poe’s class.
Professor Poe started the class by asking, “How would you like to take part of something great. You can do the regular work of a college student (i.e. read a bunch of textbooks write a couple papers and take a couple tests) and forget what you learned the next month or start something that you can tell your grandkids, ‘Yeah I started that.’” We looked around the room not really knowing how to react. I was tentative because I was actually interested in learning about Russian history. But then I thought back to my first semester freshman year college writing professor who said, “In college, you will learn to take advantage of once in a lifetime opportunities.” I couldn’t believe I was doing this. I at least expected to receive a syllabus. Onetime about halfway through he reach into his briefcase and I though finally the syllabus, but nope. It was a small spiral notebook that he had a few idea jotted down in it. I figured what the hell, if I really screw up this class this semester, I always have next semester to make it up.
Our class project was to make a website that would be around 500 years from now. People all over would go to it for primary sources. It would be a compellation of world wide memoirs. I was intrigued because I had always thought it would cool to write down “my memoirs” like some famous person one day. Little did I know that that opportunity would come quicker than expected. Also, working on a yearlong history thesis, I knew how beneficial it would be to have easy access to primary sources, since I would be writing a large paper based solely on primary sources.
I know I will remember the class meetings more than any other class I have taken at college. First because no other history class ever let us out consistently early, certainly not by one and a half hours. Second because I didn’t learn rote facts. We learned how people “get things done in the real world.” Sure we cut corners to get things done. Perhaps we were actively told to confront the strange plagiarism line by getting information online and not necessarily asking for permission. So what if we didn’t create our own software. It was there for us to use and use it we did. This is how people get things done and if we didn’t our project would never have lifted off. I know we didn’t do anything wrong, but it was interesting to see a professor not hesitate going into the grey area.
We later learned that this had a greater and loftier purpose than just creating a site for people to use for documentation. I hope we help academics, but the real motivation is to help those in recovery. It seemed as though the entire semester we concentrated on having purely historical memoirs, but really the site was designed to help people get over substance abuse problems. What looks like secondary concern, was the whole time, the real motivation behind the website. I can’t say I was shocked when I heard this, the way the conversation was going, I kind of guessed it. I hope that this project becomes huge even more now. I hope word of mouth really spreads this past some college experiment because it would be amazing to know that I helped start something that truly helps other people. I rather it didn’t but, quite frankly, I if the whole memoirs for historical purposes gets scrapped, I would be ok with it if the real motivation for it lasts 500 years. Although it would be cool to have a huge memoir bank that everyone in the world contributes to, but not realize the importance it plays on the day to day lives of the people it was created for.
