Hello fellow PAT-ers and lovers of history!
As your new PAT blogger (and beloved dictator), I would first like to say how excited I am to have the opportunity to facilitate this forum and forge another link between Phi Alpha Theta and the PSU history community at large. I view this medium as a space where we all can have an opportunity to share our thoughts and ideas, even if our schedules prevent us from meeting face to face.
My hope for this blog in the coming months is to not only post my own thoughts and questions about history and what it means to be a historian, but to encourage every one of you to submit your own as well. As historians, we are a unique (and arguably superior) breed, and the world should bear witness to our brilliance! In all seriousness, I would like to take this opportunity to invite each and every one of you to submit your own blog posts or questions, either in the comments below or at this email: bakeran@pdx.edu.
To start the ball rolling: how did you decide to become a history major? If you are a graduate student, did you earn your undergraduate degree in history or in some other field? If you earned your degree in a different field, how did you decide to earn your graduate degree in history, and how do the two fields relate to each other? Or, if you have a degree in something like underwater basket weaving or the study of ontological empiricism, well... not sure I can help you at that point. Best of luck to you.
From a personal perspective, I only came to history after I changed my undergraduate major twice before: from education to economics to history. Why did I end up in history? I had fallen in love with the subject during my sophomore year in high school, but had come to the conclusion that I needed to do something more practical with my life (anybody else have that moment? Like maybe you should be taking classes in how to write the technical guides for toasters instead of the history of Imperial Russia?). My sophomore year in university, I came to another conclusion: it was not going to matter so much, in the long run, what my undergraduate major was. So I might has well be doing something I love.
And I do love it. I love the stories of people, and I love finding some aspect of that story that I never understood before, or maybe even that nobody else has found before. Perhaps most of all, I love telling those stories to others.
Now its your turn: you've been asked by everybody else, now you're being asked by someone who isn't going to laugh at you. Why history?
I happen to love answering the question: Why History? As a kid, I remember geeking out over ancient Greek myths and Roman stories of conquest. My parents turned me on to reading actual history when they noticed that I was just reading the same myths over and over over...I had one rule though: No American history. I hated it. Cowboys and Indians? Boring. Pilgrims and Turkeys? Who cares. WWII? eh. I'll admit my parents tried hard to interest me in American history and I just couldn't do it.
ReplyDeleteThis changed though after a trip to Estes Park while I was in junior high. I was woken up to an unknown passion within me when I saw mountains for the first time, gazed at the Milky Way splashed across the night, and looked across a valley that had little (if any) indication of other humans. Suddenly, Teddy Roosevelt was a badass and the 1960's were totally groovy.
Later, when I entered college at the University of Wyoming, I decided to major in finance and minor in history (so I could make a "living"). After too much hiking, not enough studying, and very little interest in business I returned home to finish my final two years, but this time I majored History. During those years, I became passionately interested in labor and environmental history. After my hardcore "anti-capitalist" phase I mellowed out and began to appreciate all aspects of American History. Even WWII and the pilgrims.