Gaddis' book definately raised some interesting points about the role of historians. I don't know if I necessarily agree with all his ideas, but he definately gets you thinking about history and the role of historians in making it. I specifically liked the argument he made comparing history to a landscape. It is clear in the forefront but as you get farther and farther away from the subject it gets blurry and confused. Everyone can see the subject, but accurately portraying the entire landscape is the challenge historians must overcome. During my wikipedia project I definately saw how true this was. One of my stubs had a wealth of information while one of them was very hard to find anything on. I had to expand my search to find info on one and narrow my search on the other. I liked Blaine's point about everything being related because in history it does seem like events are connected. Basically history is very hard to define because the decisions about what is history are made by humans. It is important to remember this and challenge history because it is a living thing.

As for the final exam I liked the format of the midterm. The take home portion gave us time to put down all our ideas but the in class portion gave us a chance to reflect everything we studied and went over in class.