This is the stuff that scares me. I really feel like, as Kennigit says below, it is a world for those who decided early. I've been bouncing around my whole time in college attempting to try and find what I like to do and enjoy. Only recently had it dawned on me that pursuing history was an option. But its already second semester junior year, and I've only started to get a handle on a second language. I haven't done anything to distinguish myself, and if people like you are the ones I'm up against, I don't have much of a chance at all.
I'm not trying to discourage you outright. You just need to be aware of what the situation looks like going in and to prepare adequately with backup plan(s)
Your second paragraph is also a bit worrisome. Is it really a dog-eat-dog world out there for academics? I'll ask this same question below again in response to some other people.
Yes, it really is that competitive. You have hundreds upon hundreds of PhD graduates competing the for same 5 or 6 quality tenured positions. And then once you're in the tenure track you're looking at the same 20 or so professors in your field competing for the same research grants. And once you do get published those same 20 professors are looking for any and every way to cut you down in order to advance their own line of research which may be conflicting with your conclusions. All offices have their fair share of politics and throat-cutting and whatnot. But because of the highly competitive nature of academia it is raised by several orders of magnitude.
Oh, and your last paragraph makes me happy! The one thing I'll miss, leaving school and going to work using broad based skills as opposed to being a historian is history! I really enjoy reading about it, discussing it, and learning more. And its good to see you can get academic fulfillment outside of just doing graduate and PhD work. I know I'll always have CFC, and my friends, but having a professor at hand who I could go to at any time and just talk history is just a fantastic resource.
Another good field to look into is museum curation. My uncle started graduate school in the early 90s eager to pursue a future in Academia, but quickly realized the rat-race wasn't for him. He got out with his masters and got into museum work. He's since become perhaps the foremost expert on George Washington Masonic History, works as an archivist for a Washington museum, and is currently working on getting a book published. It can be a very rewarding field - you get to teach people stuff, there are avenues for independent research and publication, and the competition isn't quite so nasty.
However, I was always afraid if I made a job out of something I loved I'd come to hate it. It'd cease being interesting and instead just become work. If I worked with history, would I stop loving history? Is it better kept as a hobby and interest rather than a line of work?
Depends on how you handle the other sides of the job. Wry still loves history, he's just become jaded with the current state of academia, which he views as too Ivory Tower-esque. Personally I think the whole "coming to hate the work you do" comes from a lack of interest in progressing. BirdJag's advice above was probably the best advice you can ever receive, not just for the job market, but for life in general. No matter what it is you're doing, always look to improve yourself and acquire mastery. Fulfillment will flow from that.
It is good to hear I can get places on a B.A. alone. I
don't want to end up like the managers at the movie theater I worked at over the summer, thirty-somethings working for horrid pay at a job designed to churn out teenagers. I would like a job that rewards the skills I've built in college, lets me live comfortably (I don't need to be rich! I just want food, internet, and the ability to do what I want most of the time), and further builds up skills that would let me advance inter or intra field. Is that asking too much or a definite possibility? I think I know the answer but it doesn't hurt to ask
As others have said it's not about the degree you have so much as the way you sell it in interviews and cover letters. Pick up some books on personal finance. You'll be surprised how well you can do on relatively little salary, especially if you start saving/investing early. Compounding Interest works wonders mang.
I think for you you're having the "crisis" that most people have around their 3rd year in university. The American dream revolves around a grand plan that everybody is expected to follow:
get good grades->get into good college->get good degree->get good job->move up ladder of good job->get married->buy house->have kids->???->retire->get to do things you actually want to do
The time between get good degree and get good job is the first "jumping off point" in that American dream. Before that everything is more or less prepared for you. High School is easy - you have little to focus on. Applying to college is built into high school and when you're in college college is all you have to focus on. Once you get out of college it's the first time where that path opens up. Suddenly you have to intuit for yourself how to progress to the next step of the path and nobody is going to tell you EXACTLY WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT. That's scary. To me it sounds like, like so many other Americans our age, you've never had to seriously evaluate yourself and figure out what you're passionate about. What you love doing. What makes you wake up early in the morning and stay up for hours later than you should. It's good that you're asking these questions now, and not after you've graduated, like so many other people our age have.
I'd say the most important thing to focus on is to enjoy what you're doing. This is your one life to live. Don't spend it living a life somebody else has set out for you. Pursue your passions and always look to improve yourself in whatever you pursue. Success will follow.
This idea is something I feel like I'm leaning towards now. I've found out, living here at college, that I get really anxious and high anxiety when I don't have concrete plans, or a future planned out. If I have no idea what I'm going to do going into the next day, week, month, or season, it kills me. To have backup options outside of schooling is something I'm going to need to do if I don't wanna go mad!
This is a very good anxiety to have.
This is what I've been trying to do with Japanese and the thought is encouraging considering the slow pace! However, with a language as foreign as Japanese, I've been told (by professor B of all people!) that it's something that needs to be taught. How far can one get on their own learning a language? At what point is professional instruction needed? Are there options for professional instruction after college (and are they awfully expensive
)?
Japanese is arguably the most difficult language for an English speaker to learn. The syntax is difficult. There is a lot of morphology to learn. And you basically have to memorize how to write each word discretely. The BEST way to learn any language is in a formal class setting. There are plenty of other ways to go about it. Look into your uni though. See if they offer Japanese classes. I find the introductory levels are the most important to get formalized education in (levels 1-3 or 4). After that it's easier to do stuff on your own. Find the time to take these if Japanese is what you're serious about. I took Spanish, German, and French at University, for 2 quarters I had all three classes back-to-back-to-back. It's very doable. Once you've progressed to intermediate level it's much easier to do things on a self-taught basis. Watch tv/movies. Read books. Get a penpal. Find someone to skype with. The most important thing is that you make sure you're doing something EVERY DAY with the language. Last year I was doing 1 hour of duolingo, 1 hour of German reading, and 1 hour of watching German tv every day. I've since cut it back a bit, but I'm still putting in 2 hours of German practice every day, with an hour each of French and Spanish to boot. It takes persistence, and it seems like a big time commitment, but you'll be surprised by how much time you actually have in a day when you limit your time spent on the computer. Learning a language isn't easy, but it's very doable. Especially in this connected world where everything is available and open.
After deciding on the job I'm going to get for the summer (never got a chance to thank you for your advice in the Rants thread Owen, thank you!) I think I'm going to start researching what I can do after I graduate next year. I might start another thread!
No problem. That advice applies to any career. Simply by being persistent you set yourself above a good 70-80% of your competition. It's incredible how few people actually bother to consistently follow up on something they're pursuing. I've been looking into a renting a room in Berkeley for this summer and just yesterday I had a potential renter tell me they considered me their top choice for the room simply because I actually bothered to follow up on her emails every day.
A lot to think about here. Based on all these, it looks like grad school and the history profession might not be for me. This will require some more serious consideration and rethinking of my life. It's very helpful, even if it can be heavily discouraging at times.
As I said. It's good you're thinking about these things now, and not, say, after you graduate, or after you're already a year into your graduate studies. These are tough questions, sure, but they're also extremely important.
Yeah, I was eyeing a program in the Republic of Georgia some years ago. The pay is very low, and they put you up with a family, which can be good and bad, but who cares, you're able to live in a foreign country and learn and you don't have to pay to do so! And the requirements to get in were very low.
I'm not interested in Japan or Spain, but some countries I'd definitely go for. I'd love to do something like that! Maybe I could return to Germany, but do they really need any help with their English?
Even if not. Just go to Germany. Look into visas and make it happen. You never know what you'll find. I had a friend who just went to Spain on a whim after college and has been there for the last year and a half. Your 20s are the time to dick around and figure out what you want to do. I don't remember if Germany has a teaching English program per se, but it wouldn't surprise me.
A couple of things make me worry about it. One, I've often heard that since there's a glut of history teacher candidates, you have to coach a sports team (or do some other extracurricular thing) as well if you get hired. And come to think of it, that's what my history teachers did. I know and care nothing about sports, and couldn't and wouldn't possibly do that. Is this really a thing?
Extracurricular doesn't just = sports. There's always debate, or GSA, or any number of other clubs. Basically all that means is because of the high competition they're looking for candidates who set themselves apart from the field. Multiple skills means fewer employees for the school to hire. Which is what they like.
The other concern is that in my high school experience, the kids were by and large pretty apathetic towards school and the course material. They just didn't care, wouldn't pay attention, and often cheated on tests--even some of the brightest students being taught by one of the best teachers. They're in high school because they have to be, not because they want to be, so in the meantime they'll text and talk in class, pay no attention, do the bare minimum, cheat if they can, and churn out possibly purchased or plagiarized essays with no substance. You get a few exceptions here and there, but at a public high school, what more can you expect?
Is college any different? Remember your introductory history classes? How many people were there because they had to be? How many times do you remember having an AMAZING professor who got kids so engaged in the material (even if they were only there because they had to be) that you could hear a pin drop in the lecture hall. I can remember a few profs like that. I can also remember a ton of profs who were so boring and terrible that basically every student spent the full hour ignoring them and hanging out on facebook.
Ah, see, that's a problem because I'm a lazy introvert. I have a hard time getting myself to do anything like that, let alone take up a new hobby or diet or anything like that and stick with it for years. And over here, it's so far been very hard to even find German students to speak with. I'm surrounded by the other exchange students all the time. Things should change once classes start but I dunno. I will have to sign up for a ,,Sprachtandem" program here, though. That should help.
This really annoys me. I used to have a really hard time with this sort of stuff. 1) You aren't lazy. If you are at all intelligent you are definitionally not lazy. Intelligence means having a desire to learn and understand things. No matter what it is. I used to think I was "lazy" until I actually spent some time thinking about how I spent my day. Hours spent wandering around wikipedia and wiktionary. Reading longform articles on random topics. That's not laziness. It goes back to how America phrases things philosophically. Everything is about following that path. "Oh you're learning German? What good is that. Everybody speaks English there". Learning German doesn't service that path. And if you fall off the path you can go [fornicate] yourself as far as America is concerned. No, you aren't lazy. You're procrastinating, which is when you fail to do things you want to do due to some personal reason, be it conscious or subconscious. The way to fight procrastination is twofold. An example:
For the longest time I had a lot of trouble with procrastination. I'd put things off and off and off, and then I'd miss a deadline and feel awful about it. I don't really procrastinate anymore, and that's because I came to a few realizations.
1) I realized that things I procrastinate on aren't things "I have to do" (because someone expects me to). They are either a) things I want to do, or b) things I should be doing because they're necessary in order to do something I want to do.
2) Through self-reflection I came to understand that the reason I put things off was because I have a deep-seated fear of failure. It's pretty common among people our age with high levels of intelligence. You're told all your life you're special or exceptional, such that facing the prospect of definitively and objectively being told you aren't special or exceptional is daunting. You don't want to deal with it so you put it off, because "how can you truly fail if you never try," right? So I'd just put things off. As long as I avoid having to face judgment, or never honestly putting full effort into it, I can always walk away with my self-esteem intact.
Eventually I came to realize that what other people say or tell me about myself shouldn't be something I should fear. I think a good amount of this came from learning languages. Being good at learning languages is about entering a certain state of mind. You can't have any ego when you go into learning languages because you're going to [fornicate] up. A lot. Learning languages is about celebrating failure. Hooray! I [fornicated] up! Now I can figure out what I did wrong and endeavor not to do that in the future. So I basically just applied that way of thinking to other parts of my life. Philosophically I see the point of life being to learn, and understand, and experience as much of this life as I can in the short time I have. Going to graduate school is something I
want to do, and things like getting letters of recommendation, going to Berkeley to learn Latin, and taking the GRE are things which
must be done to achieve that end. Thereby those other things are also things I
want to do. So why am I avoiding them?
Once you achieve this way of thinking about things you "have" to do, the only real hurdle you have to focus on is getting started. Once you take that first step, the understanding that these are, in fact, things you want to do will carry the rest through naturally, surprisingly easily, in fact.
I'll do this! I'm really starting to warm up to this idea, and I think it will be the most exciting actually. Going into the unknown, and exploring career options. The only things I really fear are getting stuck in a job where I don't feel like I'm "advancing," or dead-ending it. And in turn be stuck doing the same thing for multiple decades. No fun! I think, at least now, my interests tend to wane and wax a lot. Doing the same thing for even multiple years in a row is kind of tough to imagine without me hating it at the end. I don't know, all this stuff I need to figure out within a year, blech.
As Birdjag noted, as long as you always focus on improving yourself, always focus on achieving mastery in whatever you do, I doubt you'll ever find yourself "stuck" in a job. And even if you are "stuck", why are you doing it then? This is your one life to live. Live it doing things you want to do, not doing what others say you "should" or "have to" do.
Anyways! I talked to my other professor (C), and his advice was a bit different. He emphasized getting the language skills down first. Don't even think about Grad school now, but rather, think about learning the language and eventually getting to Japan and seeing if I even like it. If I do, well, going to Japan itself opens up opportunities.
This is very good advice. I think the big thing for you right now is figuring out what you're passionate about, and pursuing that. If you go through, say JET, and still find it's something you're passionate about, coming in with Japanese experience will be very beneficial. The big thing with Grad school applications is proving to the university that you aren't wasting their time. From the moment you get in, in the eyes of the university, you have 5 years to complete your dissertation. Time wasted having to learn languages, settle on a thesis, find the right professor, learn how to do manuscript research increases the likelihood (to them) that you won't finish your work in 5 years. The more of those things you can take care of the stronger your application will look to them.
He actually mentioned the same program Owen did, the JET program. So I think I'll look into that, especially over the summer.
It really is a fantastic program, and the pay ain't terrible either. This is my friend's blog, if you're interested in reading about her experiences in the program:
http://laurenlovesnoodles.blogspot.com/ It's a blog both for the semester she spent studying abroad in Hong Kong, and the JET program. Her blogging on the JET program begins in June, 2014.
). Over the years I leap-frogged my way up the management ladder at different companies in different industries beginning with marketing, then adding operational experience, financial analysis and strategic planning. I still teach someone everyday. I currently run a successful company.
