Hey /r/AskHistorians. I don't exactly know if this is the right place to ask this question or if there is a different subreddit dedicated to careers (I'm only a few weeks old on Reddit), but this is pretty big decision I have to take soon and it does involve my love for history.
I'll soon be applying for an undergrad course now and due to certain circumstances I'm studying in the science stream now. However, I've been interested about history since I was in school and would like to study it further and hopefully take up a career in it. And this is where you guys come in.
Could any of you tell me about what careers or jobs I can pursue in the field? Anything you know at all would be welcome and appreciated. I really do want to study and hopefully work in the stream and any information regarding the same would really be helpful. Like are any of you in the same field, do you have relatives who are. Do you know anything about those careers. Anything at all would be nice. I'll be posting this in the /r/history too, so if this post is deleted due to non relevance, you could go there as well. Please, please, please help me. I've been reading about the Crusades and the Black Death and the French Revolution and the World Wars ever since I could remember. Your information could help me pursue my passion in the same.
Thanks a lot.
Hi there! You might check out the replies in this thread from a few weeks ago:
As you will see from my response, I would not bet on becoming a professional (academic) historian — that is not what most history majors do, it not what most majors in any subject do (becoming a professional academic is like becoming a professional ballerina — the numbers are against you, the path is a tough one, even if you are very good at it and love it). I would not see it as "the job you get because you have a history major." I would instead see it as, "the kinds of skills you'll be getting and the kinds of career paths that are compatible with that."
I will also say, from experience, that in many institutions there are various ways of doing both a history and a science degree as a harmonious pairing of majors. It's a lot of work, obviously, but it gives you a lot of options (and a pretty broad worldview).