User:Mellowgloom

Hello
This is my user page. ADHD/Autistic burnout who is not really proficient in anything when you get down to it. I like tidying up grammar and rephrasing sentences to ensure that articles maintain a consistent formal tone.

Science, Mathematics, and computers are not intuitive subjects for me. I'm more adept at pattern recognition and analogizing in historical or sociological contexts. I have a MA in History with some training in public history. I am someone who almost never fully commits to anything with a hundred percent certainty, so it makes sense that I would gravitate toward open-ended academic disciplines like the humanities which allow one to form a perspective based on a multitude of approaches and philosophies in pursuit of "true understanding" of history and reality et al.

There are theories, or "lenses", that I know for certain I do not agree with, and theories that I borrow from and believe help one approach "truth" more readily than others. I believe that intersectional feminism and queer theory offer much more insight than old-school vanilla historical materialism. I'm also not someone that will label myself a "[insert philosophy here]" adherent, as I like to keep my options open.

As for the specific areas of study that I enjoy, they include the extremely mercurial history of race in the United States, specifically the history of Chinese Americans; global history; cultural history; psychology (especially child psychology); gender studies; and LGBT history.

My particular interests lay in the mutability of social categories such as race and gender, the eternal rhythmic nature of the push-pull between progress and conservatism, trends that  short-sighted pinning down the true motivations for cultural shifts. People are strange and contradictory--even hypocritical--things, and I have to give it up to my Autism for making it easy to see through the smokescreen and realize that most of what people believe to self-evident and immutable is in fact 'just made up'. Because it is made up, there is no reason why it can't be changed for the better.