A while back, I received an email from the Alumni Association at my college, asking if I could write something about how I’m using my history degree today.
Something like this:
The first and second paragraphs seem to be asking two different questions: “what have you done with a history degree?” v. “What has a history degree done for you?” While I’ve gone on to what I think is an interesting and successful career, I can’t really think of how my training in history has mattered in my professional life. I’ve suceeded more in spite of my choice of major than because of it.
You see, I was a physics major for two years before slamming into the brick wall of advanced calculus. Since financial constraints dictated that I graduate in four years (the folks weren’t going to shell out another $20K), I had to find a major that I could complete with the limited time I had left.
Ironically, it was precisely because history was so different a field that the switch was easy: the other sciences, while interesting, all had strict ladders of required courses that had to be completed and would take too many semesters. History courses, on the other hand, were wide open and had no set sequence. In addition, I’d already taken several history courses to satisfy my non-science requirements, while my physics courses could now be counted toward the science requirements of a history major. As an added bonus, while graduation required a final exam in your field of specialty (modern Europe, in my case), a thesis was not necessary if you weren’t going for an honors degree. I made my choice, passed the classes, and received my diploma.
Since college, I’ve worked overseas (and not in Europe) as an English teacher, a tech writer for satellite and submarine networks, and most recently as an ad writer. Even at my current job, knowledge of science, math and engineering comes in handy much more than history. I do a lot of writing, but I think my writing style was helped more by reading a lot rather than studying history (in any case, my writing now is much better than it was in college). As for the degree itself, in cases where it’s helped, the companies I applied to were more impressed that I went to a name-brand university than with what I’d actually studied; I could have majored in accounting mythology for all they cared.
Since an honest recounting of my undergraduate and post-college experiences probably wouldn’t persuade anyone to choose history as a major, I declined to respond. But it started me wondering:
- Have any of you history majors out there gone on to make use of it in your professional lives?
- If so, what are you doing?
- If you could go back and do college over again, would you have picked a different major? (I probably would have gone with government, leaning toward international relations)