I’m sorry no one has given you an answer to your predicament. To be honest, you sound like me ten years ago. A lot has worked out for me, and a lot hasn’t, so I’ll try to give you some advice that I would have liked to have received if I had known more about the field of history and what it entails back then, and hopefully it’ll be useful to you now.

Realistically though, my parents are pushing me to be a Lawyer. I love to argue and have strong opinions but I am put off by the debt and also the fact that there are more graduates than jobs available.

First the good news: you can major in history and keep the option of becoming a lawyer open. A history major is often a first step towards a law career. I have two good friends who started in the history department and are now studying for or have already passed their BAR exam.

On some days, this is a path I wish I took. I recommend you not only keep your parents pacified, while staying in an advantageous (i.e. open options) position, while also being able to pursue your passion.

I also have heard "It's a useless degree"

There’s… er… some truth to this. But see above: it’s not all that useless. The element of truth is that outside of academia, there isn’t a whole lot of demand for people walking around spouting off historical facts. And yes, I recognize the irony of a flaired user on a board dedicated to that very thing telling you that. But again, devil’s in the details: I’m a guy who works in some form of academia and is trying to get my work published, and if you want a career dedicated to historical research, academia is pretty much where it’s at.

"your undergrad doesn't matter, so do whatever you want".

Again, there’s some truth to this. But not a whole lot. My undergraduate degree had little influence on my current Master’s program, but I could have been situated in a better position if I had known I was interested in Tibetology a decade ago and adjusted my education options accordingly.

I wanted to ask what careers are feasible with a History degree. I want to work WITH History, not just get a business job or something because it is easy to get.

As I wrote above, lawyer is a career that works with history. But probably not in the way you’re thinking. Outside of that, there’s pretty much academia and writing. And none of those options are mutually exclusive. Knowing what I know now, I would seriously reconsider going for a law degree. I could have pursued Tibetan as a kind of minor, and still spent a lot of my time (as I do already) independently researching and studying and interacting with the Tibetan lay and academic community.

That said, I’m pretty satisfied being where I am right now, and I can give you some hints as to a more direct route to this kind of a place:

1. Study Language

I know my European Philological bias is showing, but I’m going to put this at the top. If you are interested in Greek history but don’t know Greek, ain’t no one going to pay you to travel the world to lecture on Greek history. If you’re interested in Korean or Japanese history but don’t know Korean or Japanese, what are you even doing here?

Philology, the art of critical understanding and reading, primarily in the original language (to take just one definition of the term) is largely absent from American Universities, so if you utter this alleged dirty word outside of Continental Academia, you’ll probably hear a groan or two, at least one hiss, and someone speaking the Black Speech of Mordor in the background. Here on the Continent, Philology is a way of life.

And even if you’re going to get through your undergraduate degree entirely in English, and use only secondary sources and translations for your studies (as many and dare I say, most do in American universities, indeed, I did) when it comes to studying history the important thing to seriously ask (especially when considering a long-term career) is “What do you bring to the table?”

Imagine going to a conference on Japanese history. You don’t know Japanese, but you’ve studied all of Turnbull’s work. You have an encyclopedic knowledge of the Cambridge History of Japan. You know the history of the Imjin War, the Sengoku Jidai, all the names of the Japanese Emperors in order, you’ve taken every English tour available in Japan, hung out with Japanese monks and studied a hundred books on the history of Zen Buddhism, are familiar with every general and regiment of World War II. And then after your presentation you only source other historians’ work. The moment someone raises their hand to quote a primary source (in Japanese) that contradicts your argument, you are shit out of luck.

Not learning another language (and you didn’t indicate this in your OP, so I’m just going to continue. Also those who speak more than one language often end up having to learn the classical version anyway, see below) limits your historical range to only your primary language. In this case, English. English history is broad and there’s a lot of places to maneuver, but you’re pretty much stuck in the English-primary countries. Even military history will be limited to engagements where the perspective will be hampered by only being able to discuss one side of the conflict (unless you are studying only conflicts fought between two English sides, i.e. Civil War history, etc.).

I have friends who are archaeologists and study classical Greek (the one I have especially in mind is half-Greek, but old Greek is vastly different from the modern version, and takes a lot of training). That means, however, that she has access to those historical documents. In my field the most dedicated study not just Tibetan, but also Sanskrit and Chinese to have access to translations that can support their study.

If you want to study Greek history you’re gonna have to learn Greek. If you want to study Korean or Japanese history, you’re going to have to study one or both.

2. Asian Study Abroad

I studied abroad in Asia and went on to work there afterward and I highly recommend the former, not so much the latter. First the study:

I studied abroad in Bhutan, which is probably one of the primary reasons I was accepted to my current study program: I had hands on experience which a lot of my classmates didn’t have with the culture and countries that we study. I had lived among the people, and talked with locals, and studied (materially, at least) the culture that I wanted to understand more from its own words. Not only that, but from my subjective experience, the writer I was before I traveled to Bhutan and the writer that came back are two separate people. Stories that I had begun before my tra`vel I was unable to continue working on, I had seen and experienced so much that was just different. It’s well worth it.

If I could change anything about it, it’d be my own dedication to the study. I would have sought out more language resources both prior to and during the study. I would have made a harder effort at a linguistic base than worry about having some cash to throw around when I was there (stupid me, we got an allowance from our professor anyway). And then in the country I wish I separated myself from my English-interested classmates and pressured the language professor who was way more lax in retrospect, and tried to drill myself a bit harder on the vocabulary and sentence structure. I had roommates and friends, I should’ve studied that language base. There’s a saying about how when you speak to someone in their language, you speak “to their heart.” And it goes beyond that to being important contextually as well: some words that might translate the same into English are understood differently in the base language. There are untranslated words which may become historically important depending on the subject matter, but that become crucial when determining whether someone intended an action, or whether there were other factors that were primarily important.

Huh, I didn’t intend to round back to this point, but here we are.

Anyway, working abroad is a totally different animal. I’m not sure if you’re aware that Korea and Japan have some of the absolute worst working conditions and worker’s protections (especially for foreigners) in the industrialized world. That said, it can be a total crap-shoot. I stuck out my job(s) in Korea for two years, and met tons of people who pulled the ol’ midnight run after a week or two of abusive shifts and emotionally unstable owners, and then I’ve met people who’ve married Koreans, found bosses and coworkers they loved, and just found their niche. It’s a total crapshoot over there, is what I’m saying. (To jump on the academia train though, we all looked up at those who taught at University level as gods. I’m sure they had their complaints, but it wasn’t private teachings in academies where normal industry practice is to torture the teachers until they quit so they lose workers’ rights, forfeit their last pay check, and you don’t have to pay for their flight home…)

In short: definitely study abroad. It’s completely worth the perspective shift, but make the most of it and learn up before you go, study the language and meet with locals. As far as working and making a life, be very careful and do a lot of research so you know what you’re getting into.

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