Questions concerning improving at history

[Flightless Steller's jay]

I have been lurking around on these forums for a while now, but here recently I have decided to join and make my first post. I have always been a relatively decent generalist, but I have always found a huge roadblock within history. I have now decided to break free of my ineptitude in history and actually dedicate time to studying and improving in history. When doing this within the last month I have found huge struggles in learning history, so I have a couple of questions about how I can get good at history.

1. Soaking up history knowledge
One of my biggest pitfalls I have noticed with my studying of history is that I can't soak up history knowledge like I can other subjects. For example, whenever I am studying one of my better categories, most notably science, I can very easily soak up the knowledge and things I see in clues. WIth science I never have to spend immense time dedicating things likes names, experiments, or concepts to memory. Meanwhile, with history, I have to spend immense time dedicating people, dates, wars, battles,or organizations to memory. Is this something can be broken out of? Is there any possible methods I can use which will make it easier to just naturally remember history concepts? Or am I just fated to never be a good at history.

2. Gaining decent knowledge of the canon
The idea of getting a sense of knowledge and scope of the history canon has been a seemingly impossible hill to climb in my quizbowl journey. Everytime I would study a packet or hop on protobowl to study, it seems I am always introduced with endless new history things I have never even heard of. Is there a way to get a good idea of the canon besides just reading packets?

Before I fully wrap up this post I do wanna make a sort of pseudo-postscript and say that I do have some good knowledge in specific areas of history, specifically Roman and middle eastern. I was wondering if it is all possible to learn history by relating it back to what I know very well? Or is that too hard of a task to do and not at all practically possible. As I do wrap up this post I wanna say I am looking forward to being a part of this community I have passively enjoyed over the years. And preemptively I'd like to go ahead and say thank you for the responses.

Sincerely,

Flightless Steller's jay (I forgot to capitalize the jay when signing up)

[Liarr]

I think you are on the right path in your postscript: relating the history knowledge you acquire to what you already know is probably the best way to have things stick in your mind. History is like a map; a piece of it like an individual date or clue will have a lot more meaning for you if you can relate it to the other bits of the map. One way to learn history in this way is to use wikipedia by looking at a page for a subject you're familiar with, and then following the links when you see something that exercises your curiosity.

[Halinaxus]

One way to learn history in this way is to use wikipedia by looking at a page for a subject you're familiar with, and then following the links when you see something that exercises your curiosity.

+1

Seriously, I got so many buzzes off of this in high school that it became a meme amongst my teammates. I call it "Wikipedia Wormholing" and it remains my primary study method for quiz bowl to this day (including non-history topics, though I've found it works especially well for history).

[Flightless Steller's jay]

"Wikipedia Wormholing" is primarily how I know my science and philosophy knowledge.