Some say that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it, but what if no one finds history fascinating enough to study? Some people think that History is a boring subject and that dates are really hard to remember. Why should we even be required to take a History class?
High school senior me would agree with all of the above. I hated History. I hated all of my History teachers. It was my least favorite subject. I liked learning about certain time periods and some events, but the tests and the memorization was killer. Who really wanted to learn about how the evidence presented against those accused as witches in Salem affected their outcome? Who really cares if Shakespeare was or wasn't misogynistic in his plays?
Turns out, I do.
As a junior in college, I am a History major. My passion changed from writing and editing to wanting to work in museums and creating exhibits. I realized that, yeah dates are important, but no one really requires you to learn the specifics in the real world. High school courses are brutal no matter what subject it is. I realized that I have passions within the major and what I want to further my education in.
And it's mostly in part to the professor I had my freshman year.
I originally was enrolled for a Spanish class that I was taking for my general education requirement, but there were only three people in the class so it was dropped. One day over the summer before school started, I received a call from my adviser informing me of that and telling me that she had put me in a History class instead so I could get that general education class out of the way.
I almost cried.
But as the semester went on, I really took an interest in the way that this professor taught and the way that he ran his classes. Turns out that conversation style classes were a good environment for me. He was also just a genuinely nice person.
So I considered a minor in History.
Then I did the math, which is amazing because I am currently in Calculus and I forgot how to subtract over the summer, and I realized that I could finish my History minor pretty quickly.
So why not major?
So here I am, a junior History major with a double minor in Writing and Political Science.
History is so important to me, and I cannot even begin to talk about how important it is to the whole world. Most people nowadays don't even give History classes the time of day or even consider the professors who have dedicated countless hours into doing research on how to teach the class and what book would be best. They have given so much time learning about what they actually teach. They can give you pretty much an answer for everything. Yet, people look the other way.
A study done by the National Center for Education Statistics show that in 2014, only 1.7% of the country's graduating students had a bachelors degree in History.
But why even major in History when there are no jobs for it, right? WRONG.
There's a lot more than you can do with a degree in History than you think. Most careers that you are already going into pair extremely well with History to give you better job qualifications.
According to the American Historical Association, jobs that you can have as a History major include, but are not limited to, "advertising executive, analyst, archivist, broadcaster, campaign worker, consultant, congressional aide, editor, foreign service officer, foundation staffer, information specialist, intelligence agent, journalist, legal assistant, lobbyist, personnel manager, public relations staffer, researcher, teacher" and so much more.
So instead of bashing the ones that decide to major in History because you either think that it's boring or there's no job market for them, support them. They are the most underappreciated majors out there. A lot of behind the scenes work is being done by History majors.
