History Major
What specific things factored into my decision to major in history? Well, I had done two semesters at cnm my senior year of high school and I was a theatre major at the time. I went to cnm because I was homeschooled and I had learned everything my parents had to teach me so I did cnm classes after those two semesters I dropped out of college. The family I grew up in was not super education oriented and I did not have the money to go to school myself so I worked. About a year ago I heard that if you go to school when your twenty three they no longer check your parents income and go solely off of yours to grant you financial aid (another reason I didn’t continue school is I didn’t want to start life out in debt) even though I haven’t lived with my parents sense I was 19 according to the government I am a dependent until 24 ( I recently found out they moved the deadline from 23 to 24) and the family that I work for offered to help me pay for school so the ability to go to school finally became an option. So now that I was able to go to school, I had to decide what I wanted to do. I did not want to go back to school for theatre because as much as I love it, it is just a hobby for me. The thing that I did best in when I went to school before was math and the idea of being an engineer interested me when I was younger (specifically designing airplanes) but I did not know if I would enjoy doing math for the rest of my life. Then I thought about doing criminal justice I have a small obsession with reading books written by cold case detectives about how they solve cases that had been closed for decades, but again the question of would I really enjoy doing this came up and I could not fully say yes, and by this time I am 23 and I wanted to make sure that if I go to school again it is for something I really wanted to do. So, I sat there thinking about it and I looked at my book shelf, my book shelf that is covered in books about Norse mythology and I said to myself. “Why can’t I go to school for that?” So, I started looking stuff up on how to study Vikings and Norse myth which led me to Scandinavian studies, but to do Scandinavian studies you have to have a Batchelor’s in history or at least it helps and that is how I settled on history as my major. And the more I do history, I realize that it is like trying to crack a cold case file as I get to investigate things too.
Sometimes I feel like I have so much random knowledge clanking around in my brain I do not know what to do with it or how to use it to contribute to society to that is what I hope to experience and achieve during my time in collage. A way to use the things I love to contribute to the world around me.
When I finally settled on History as a major, I had looked up my options as far as careers went. I knew that teaching was an option and something that I already had experience in as I worked as an assistant preschool teacher, but I really did not want to be a teacher. I found that you could be a museum curator with a Batchelor’s in history and I thought that would be so cool! But it is a relief to know that there are other options out there and I am not restricted to a small area of work incase my goals are not fulfilled the way I hope they will be.
I think that the skills I have learned in this class have not only helped me think academically but also gave me things to apply to life the same kind of questions that I ask about history. It also gives me practical skills on finding information which is useful in lots of areas of life.
