Whenever I tell someone that I’m in the history department here at CWRU, there are usually three responses:
- “Oh, that’s… interesting.”
- “So you’re pre-med? Or pre-law? Or did you just drop out of an engineering program?”
- “Why are you even at Case? We’re a STEM school, after all.”
This is my response to all of these questions.
Yes, it is interesting that I’m a history major, at least to me it is. I’ve always enjoyed learning about the past, trying to make connections to other things I’ve learned, and applying these lessons to the future, in the hopes of helping humanity make less dumb decisions.
No, I’m not pre-med. I can’t look at another person’s blood without feeling like I need to vomit, and I think that’s probably a pre-requisite for any kind of medical field. I’m also not pre-law. Both of my parents are lawyers, and while I’m grateful for the life they’ve given me, I do not want to follow in their footsteps. I actually came to CWRU as a humanities major (honestly, it’s probably part of why I was accepted to this school.) I was never anything other than a history major.
Now for the real question: why am I at CWRU, considered by most to be a STEM heavy school, when I spend my life poring over books in a library, as far away from math and science as I can possibly get? The answer is simple: my department is amazing.
Though the university often fails to acknowledge it, our humanities departments have many experts in their fields, just like our sciences. I’ve had the opportunity to work with world class scholars, just like everyone else at CWRU. Even more importantly, I actually KNOW these scholars, and they know me.
My professors know me by name, they know what I’m interested in, what I want to pursue in both my academics and my career, and they’re helping me get there. Whereas my friends in larger departments are lucky to even meet with their adviser once a semester, I see mine a minimum of twice a semester, often more (admittedly, I’m usually in one of his classes every semester.) My adviser does more than lift my registration hold: he’s helped me apply for SOURCE funding, do primary source research abroad, write my capstone, and even apply for graduate school. My department is even small enough that we’ve openly joked with our professors in class, been invited to their houses to dinner, and gone to Jolly Trivia night with them (though I missed that.)
Another of being in a department that graduates less than twenty students a year is that you actually get to know your peers. I’ve had classes with the same five people since the beginning of my freshman year, and I know that I can always look forward to seeing them in other classes. We’re a close group of students, and I know I could reach out to any of them for opinions or advice on classes, research, or even just general things. I’m lucky to even call some of them my friends. While it’s true that even in larger departments you’ll find a group of close friends to work with projects on, there’s something different about having a class of 20 students where you all just sit and talk for a couple of hours.
Yes, our school has amazing science and engineering programs, but it also has amazing smaller departments. I hope that this brief explanation of my own experiences will help students in larger and more prestigious programs at CWRU understand that.
