The Path to Getting History PHD

Factual Questions
21

I hope I didn’t sound like I don’t understand this: I was never saying that historians use only old sources, just that sources stay relevant for longer in history than in say, medicine, and the ability to read those sources stays important: even then they’ve been refuted, you need to know what, exactly, was said and is being responded to.

I should probably also clarify that I am in no way a professional historian, but had an excellent medieval/classical historian as my best history professor in college, and a lot of my study group went on to get advanced degrees/work in academia.

22

Are you asking this question as an undergrad deciding what to major in with plans to go to grad school afterward, or as someone with a bachelor’s who would now like to go into Grad school?

Graduate degrees in the humanities are presently useless for employment purposes. This is not to say they’re worthless, it is just that their worth consists entirely in factors other than their (nonexistent) power to help land you a steady paycheck.

23

If you are going to be a historian, you are going to have to learn how to write from a neutral POV.

Other than that, there is a ton of good info here, and I’ll now back out and take my own notes…

24

No worries, I wasn’t contradicting you. :slight_smile: It’s quite true that there are older sources still in use. I just meant to add on to what you were saying, in that one also has to keep track of the new stuff coming in and who’s refuting whom, as well as the older stuff. You’re quite right that one needs to know the context for the newer stuff.

25

Maybe ‘objective’ is a better word than ‘neutral’? There are historians with agendas who may write in a subjective way* – understanding this may be the case goes hand in hand with the discussion about knowing the context for newer materials as well.

Many historians also follow one particular school of thought or another (Annalists, Marxists, etc), so you need to understand those schools of thought and how they can affect the point of view of the source, too.

And of course, if you go the route of ancient history, all of the ancient authors have an agenda that has to be taken into account. So with primary sources, one always has to be vigilant about context. (Then there’s the whole issue of translation, if one wants to open another can of worms.)

*Way back when I was a history TA for a Greek history class, the teacher used a textbook that had been written originally in the 1930s(!) and there were several passages in which the author was clearly comparing some aspect of Greek hubris to the Nazis, as the author was a refugee from Nazi Germany. That’s an extreme example, of course, but I’ve got a few other, recent Roman histories on my shelf that have rather obvious (and exasperating) agendas.

With luck, obvious bias and slant will be caught at the editing stage thanks to peer-review, although I have to admit I’ve been reviewing a positively ghastly book, and had to put it aside after writing in the margin, ‘With whom did you sleep to get this book published?’ Probably should step away from the review for a little while.

26

He’s 14.

27

16 now IIRC. And if he’s skipped a year, this may be his penultimate year in school before going to college.

28

As a working historian (only a Masters) who has to read a lot, let me echo Second Stone’s take, many of the best and most successful history writers are writers first. A lot of them have backgrounds as reporters, which also requires a knack for research.

For example, take a look at the Amazon list of best selling history books . Once you get over your depression about what they consider histroy, you will see it is mostly military, especially World War II, and biographies. Most are not written by professional historians, but I see a lot by people with a journalism background. There are also a number of first person accounts, so step one to becoming a successful historical author could be getting elected president, or joining an elite military unit.

29

Well he was 13 a year ago so eh… I dunno.

30

At the PhD level, this is simply not true.

I know people with humanities PhDs who work in non-profits, governmental, and business occupations, and whose positions were in large measure determined by the fact that they had a PhD. I know a couple of humanities PhDs with no business or economics experience at all who were recruited by management consulting groups (like Anderson, Boston Group, etc.). I know others who have pretty high-level jobs in government bureaucracies. These were not jobs they could have walked into with just an undergrad degree, and in each case it was clear that the PhD was an important factor in the hiring.

In just about all these cases, the work these people do is not related (in terms of subject matter) to their doctoral work; the fact that they had the research and analytical skills to get a doctorate, though, was the main reason for them getting the job.

31

You might consider getting a double major in history and journalism. You’ll learn both the subject and how to convey the subject.

32

Thank you for all the comments and suggestions.

Thank you. While I’m not interested in diplomacy as a permanent career path, I am interested in getting into politics but oftentimes politicians do have other jobs (especially as I do not want to be a lawyer and/or “professional politician”) and some such as Wilson were and are academics.

Don’t they usually still work at other universities or elsewhere because when those people appear, below their name it usually says where they work.

Yes and a freshman.

As for what area of history I’m studying I want either German or American history-I guess it’ll be a bit of a toss of a coin in the end.

33

BTW, must one take most of their courses related to their major or must they spread out their classes? And can a non-ROTC student take classes under a ROTC major?

34

Your course questions can really only be answered by your specific school. Generally (GENERALLY) the bulk of your courses will be related to your major.

Don’t wed yourself too irrevocably to any one major at this point. When I was 14 I still wanted to be a CIA agent. Now I actually have a Master’s in history and a translation certificate. High school and college both do funny things to academic ambitions.

35

On the flipside, I wanted to do either Game Design or AI when I was a kid. Right now I’m doing… Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning with application to games.

You’re going to be getting a LOT more specific than that. You still have time, don’t worry, but your research is likely going to be focused on some very, very specific periods and climates.

36

There really isn’t an ROTC major. A lot of places with ROTC offer a military science minor, to show your academic work in the program. I believe you can take the basic courses no matter what, but you need to be in ROTC to take the more advanced ones.

37

Indeed. At 14, I was certain I was going to go into meteorology. I wound up going into market research.

For that matter, most of the friends I made as a freshman in college changed their majors drastically within a year or two.

38

***As a current PhD student who will be finished–one way or the other–with the program in a few weeks, here is some advice. Before you go for your PhD (you’ll have your bachelor’s to think about it), make sure you know exactly why you’re getting it. Is it to advance your career prospects or to satisfy some personal desire to earn the highest mark of academic attainment one can get in a field? Is it career or ego, in other words? I’m not kidding: You’ll be doing yourself a great service if you think about exactly why you want this.

In my case, it was the latter. Ever since I was about your age, I knew I wanted a PhD. At one point, in fact, I wanted to get a PhD in history, specializing in early colonial American history. But, for many reasons, I ended up majoring in information systems and then going on for a stat degree. But my main reason for pursuing the degree has never changed: I just want to earn the degree. The degree itself is the goal for me. I love teaching, and am looking for teaching jobs now, but really, I don’t much care if I ever use this degree again. For me, it’s been all about the piece of paper.

PhD programs are brutal, in my experience. Only slightly less painful than paying some thug $20,000 to kick you in the nuts once a day for 4 years. You will be asked to teach 1-2 classes to apathetic students while taking at least 9 hours of your own classes too, write papers (publish or perish!), grade papers for your advisor, proctor other professors’ exams, and generally do whatever shit work is asked of you for next to no money. You will feel at times that you are the dumbest person on the planet (if you’re anything like me, it will come as a bit of a shock that, as smart as you are, you’re nothing special in Grad School Land).

You will feel hopeless, tired, and begin to envy people with “guilt-free jobs” like Wal-Mart greeters and baggage handlers, who never think, “I have nothing to do, so I should probably start another paper.” You’ll long to be doing something else, anything else. But, your pride won’t let you quit because, after all, you’ve come this far…

Is it worth it? Ask me on June 3rd. D-Day (Defense Day) for me is June 2. It feels a bit like going to your own execution, except executions are usually shorter.

***I have diagnosed clinical depression, which has flared like a sonofabitch in this graduate program.