History. More Than Just Memorizing by Paul

History. More Than Just Memorizing by Paul - July 2026 Scholarship Essay

In school there are several academic topics that we have to learn such as math, English, history and science. Some of these are challenging for people and others go through those classes without breaking a sweat. The academic topic that challenged me at first but ultimately strengthened my critical thinking skills was history, more specifically both AP World History and AP United States History.
The assignments in that academic field were one that I found difficult. While remembering certain historical events wasn’t difficult, remembering the right historical events for history I found difficult because I needed to come up with certain instances in history without a textbook/internet that could prove claims, or, when it came to document-based-questions, using documents and making sense of them to come up with claims that could answer a single question. Furthermore, instead of repeating the material, I had to explain why it mattered and how it was relevant/connected to the questions. These were all my challenges in that academic field.
Because of all these problems that I had in this subject, it led to me to develop critical thinking skills far more than any other subject had me to. This was because I was exposed to a new type of content. I had to learn more than just memorizing. I had to learn pattern recognition with events that occurred in different societies from different time frames or being able to find the similarities in events that aren't related to each other and to overall show how they follow the same themes. Furthermore, with document-based questions I had learned to decipher documents and find their talking points and who their intended audiences were. Those moments helped develop my critical thinking skills because it was more than just memorizing, it was developing connections from the past.
The academic topic that challenged me was history and it has strengthened my critical thinking skills tenfold. It taught me how to connect events from different time periods and show their similarities. It taught me how to analyze things by looking deeper than just the surface value facts and then explaining their deeper meaning. History was challenging but it was because of that challenging way of thinking that developed my skills.