The best piece of advice I could give would be to have a goal for what you'd like to do with your degree, and a plan on how to see that through. Taking it one step further, I'd encourage you to talk and work with your professors and advisor(s) throughout all of your years in university to get direction and guidance on how to accomplish that goal.

For starters: what is your objective with your history degree? Do you want to teach, and if so, at what level? Do you want to proceed all the way through to a PhD and do research/write? Would you like to work in an archive or museum setting? These are just a few examples, but I'd encourage you to first settle on what you'd like to do within the field of History, then talk to your professors and advisors about the best way to approach that end result.

For example, if all you'd like to do is teach History in a public school setting (pre-university), you might want to pair your History major with a degree in Education, or something that will get you certified to teach when you graduate. In the U.S., a History bachelor's or even master's degree alone won't be enough to get you qualified to teach in a public school setting without separate certifications. You might also find that without any teaching experience (which an education degree might be able to help with) you're going to be hard-pressed to find a teaching job in a private school setting that might not require state certification. Your advisors should be able to help you plan what courses to take based on your goals.

They also might be able to point you in the right direction about what courses to take or what additional research or work might be necessary to get into the graduate school you're potentially interested in attending. Certain schools and courses are better than others for different things, so if you're interested in archival or museum work, you might want to take different courses during your undergrad when picking your electives. Alternatively, when applying to grad schools (if that's your objective) they can tell you which ones might be best based on your field of interest. I know you're just starting out at university, but starting these conversations and developing these relationships with your advisors and professors early on is really helpful as you start honing in on what you'd like to do.

What you don't want to do is just plow ahead with your History degree with a "I'll figure out what comes next after I graduate" mentality. Come up with a plan, or at least a tentative idea of what you'd like to do with your degree, and talk to your professors and advisors about how best to position yourself during your university years to get there. Otherwise, you'll join the legions of former History majors coming out of college with a great degree and no way to use it within the "History" world.

Make sure history doesn't become your life/personality.

I think it's fair to say history is one of those degrees that people don't enter for the job prospects, even if it's certainly a very useful degree. People try to get a degree in history because they like history and find it interesting. Nothing wrong with that of course, and certainly having that interest can only help you when studying or doing your assignments.

But, and I'm speaking from personal experience here, it's really unhealthy if "I'm a history student" becomes your identity. Because honestly getting a degree is frustrating! Doing research, sitting in class, wrestling through the assigned reading, it's often quite boring and tedious. For every time there'll be a nugget of something you'll like, you'll spend many hours reading something that you couldn't care less about.

And there's also always the risk of disillusionment. I won't say this happens to everyone. But if you've built your personality around being a historian, being the person who knows a lot about history, the academic practice can hit hard. Because you'll come to know that in a way, perfect historical knowledge like you might want is unattainable, at most you can hope to be specialised and pretty up to date on a few specific topics. And that only for a while: good luck keeping up with current research after you've lost access to your university library. Meanwhile, depending on your previous education, there's also going to be a lot of things that you previously believed about history, that might be foundational to your view of it, that were flat out wrong.

And there is, of course, the ever present risk that you might have to switch majors, for whatever reason.

All of those can hit very hard if you've made your degree your identity, if being a history student is who you are. So make sure that doesn't happen. On the one hand, try to find hobbies unrelated to history: go knit, get into video games, take up a sport, whatever you like. Just something to devote your time to that isn't related to history.

On the other hand, make sure to think about how you talk about yourself as well. Personally I do my best to never say I'm a history student, but only that I'm trying to get a history degree. Because after all, for most people, pursuing a degree is a temporary thing. You'll likely end up in a field completely unrelated to it later. Very few people with history degrees end up as actual historians. So make sure to think about it that way, as a temporary activity. This is something you're doing right now, at some point it'll be over, and it's not defining you.

Basically, make sure that studying history is something you do, not something you are. And make sure that, if asked to introduce yourself, you can make an introduction that only mentions the degree in passing.