I am also 23 and am currently in my second year of being a graduate student in History. I understand 100% percent the anxiety and fear when it comes to deciding your future, especially in a field like history. Its often one of those degrees that gets looked down on as a "useless liberal arts degree" even though history degrees were some of the first degrees ever issued from universities. Due to college now being seen as an "investment in your future", any job that isnt medical, computer, or finance based is often seen as fruitless. However, I am very much of the mind that no degree is useless and that its always best to follow your passion.

I pretty sure I can speak for most that pursue history that at some point we have all been questioned about our major. The best advice I can give is to ignore what others are doing. Are there people in their early 20s work work jobs in computer science and make a decent chunk of change every year? Of course. But at the same time there's just as many who are older who struggle to find work. Everyone's different and trying to live up to the expectations that you put on yourself to be to the level of others will only do harm in the long run. Be driven in your goals, but look inwards and not outwards to others.

Before grad school, try to nail down what you want to do with it. In undergrad, I thought I wanted to be a professor. However, I ended up starting to collect old military surplus and enjoyed working with historical pieces. I quickly found that museum work has become my calling and grad school pretty much solidified it for me. Don't be afraid to take some time though. I know it can feel like you just want to rush through it to get it done but taking your time can be just as important. If your grad school is anything like mine, at 23 you'll be one of the youngest people in the program. You have plenty of time in your life to figure out what you want to do. I finally nailed down a job in my "field" by becoming a graduate assistant in the history help center of my department, assisting undergrads in history courses. Is it a big job in the history field? Obviously not, but its a stepping stone and a place to start. A small job like that, a tutor, a tour guide, assistant, ect. Could be a big boost to push you forward to what you want to do.

Ill end with a personal anecdote. If it doesn't work out, don't be scared of the future. Passions and interest do change. Both my parents got their degrees, my dad in English with a minor in math and my mom got a travel and tourism degree. Neither of them used their degrees in my entire life time and have self employed for 18 years. For the last 12 years they have run their own real estate business. A degree does not lock you into a set path. If you get your degree, which I hope you do if you're passionate about the subject, you're not stuck if it just doesn't work out for one reason or another. Plenty of people get degrees and don't go into a job in their field. No matter what, the education will help in a multitude of ways and an advanced degree will help you more than realize in life.

I happily did a history degree with a focus on the early medieval era. Loved it. Still do. But I keep that passion alive as a hobby.

Ended up in a career that saw me working in classical music, then the concert touring industry, and now for a large media and entertainment company. It’s been a random and fun road, but I did stay open to possibilities outside of history. I knew I didn’t want a job in academia - but totally thought I’d end up in museum work or something.

I gotta say, video games, anime, and film are all very lucrative industries. Maybe take a look at entry level jobs with companies there? It might surprise you that even a seemingly boring admin job in a field you like can bring a good deal of satisfaction - especially if you maintain your love and passion for history alive in your off work hours. (Or if you’re like me, catch up on interesting anecdotes through podcasts or audio courses/lectures during less engaging parts of your workday)

Hi there!

Firstly, /u/restricteddata (who I gather has these conversations with history students/graduates quite often) has given some good advice in the past about what you can do with a history degree in an American context, here and here. I think pretty much all of that advice is still pretty much good advice for my students in a different (social sciences) field in a different country - it's just good advice for people with generalist undergraduate degrees.

However, my advice or guidance for you isn't really about career paths, per se. Instead, reading through your comments in this thread replying to people, as a mod here, I notice that you clearly have a pretty negative mindset - it sort of feels that nothing that people say to you is quite right.

This suggests to me that what you really need isn't advice about what to do with your degree, but instead you might need to look at your mental health. It feels to me that your mindset is getting in the way of you fulfilling your potential. You should consider seeing your GP to evaluate your mental health, if you haven't already, and to see whether medication or talk therapy might benefit you. Psychologists can definitely work with people like yourself to see themselves in new lights, opening up new possibilities about what's possible for them. Maybe this kind of thing is or isn't what you need, but it can be worth considering as an investment in yourself.

It's been a hard couple of years for a lot of people, and I suspect it might have been for you, too. That kind of prolonged stress definitely can bring out mental health issues in lots of people, even when they're not at a fulcrum point in their lives (which the transition from education to steady work definitely is). Going to see a GP about your mental health isn't the only way to improve yourself, of course, and other kinds of ways might be more achievable for you in your circumstances. But as you said elsewhere in the thread, being an adult is difficult. I feel that a lot of the people who've successfully become adults have done it with an openness to letting others help them (which you are displaying, of course, in posting here, but which you potentially can build upon), and an openness to growth and change in themselves. Whatever career paths are on offer for you, cultivating those qualities in yourself - working on being an adult - will probably help you on that path.

You’ve gotten a LOT of good advice from people on this thread, and your response to all of it is negative. You said you’ve tried therapy, but what does “trying” look like for you? You don’t seem to be really looking for advice but have instead found why NOTHING will work? You’re giving up before even trying. Why post on here if you’ve already decided your situation is hopeless? You keep speaking in absolutes, but you’re 23. Your life isn’t over. It’s barely even started.

My $0.02 as a history major who used to think and act just like you…nobody and no thing is going to make you happy. Not a job, not a career, not a person. The only one responsible for your happiness is YOU. Until you get that figured out, it doesn’t matter what you do. Cognitive behavioral therapy helped me a lot. It forced me to challenge the way I thought and perceived the world. But you’ve got to find what works for you. You’re 23…your life isn’t over. Hell, your brain isn’t even fully done developing yet. You’ve literally got your whole life ahead of you. You mentioned you’ve got a job lined up? Great! You can earn money and take time to figure things out. I didn’t see you mention being married or having dependents…even better! You can focus solely on you.

You need to disabuse yourself of this idea that there’s some Platonic ideal of the “perfect job”. Life is about compromise and sometimes that means you have to compromise with yourself. While you certainly don’t want to be in a career or job you’re miserable in, there’s not going to be one that makes you happy 24/7.

Any career field where researching, writing, editing, analyzing, and compiling information will fit with the skills you have as a historian. Law school is a common and popular suggestion for history majors, as ANY kind of law requires a lot of reading and writing and condensing information into easily communicable briefs and presentations. However, there’s currently a glut of lawyers who did the same thing…they got a law degree because they didn’t know what else to do. But there’s also a wide variety of ways to practice law, both publicly and privately. Corporate law, family law, patent law, international law, financial law. You mentioned liking video games? Pretty sure every major hardware and software company and video game developer have their own legal departments that deal with patents, contracts, compensation, etc.

The federal government could have some potential…a lot of GS jobs for archivists, historians, researchers, etc. USAJobs.gov could be a good place to start.

Just about every major iconic American company has some sort of historical/archival division, but those are usually a part of marketing or public relations divisions. However, you could get lucky and find a job as a corporate historian (like the the guys on Modern Marvels whose job title is “Coca Cola Historian” or “Disney Historian”)

I truly wish you luck, and I hope you can work on yourself personally before sorting out your professional life.

I’m only 23 but I feel like my life (at least, being happy a majority of the time) is over.

Not to be too blunt about it, but yes. When you finish college, you enter a new stage of your life where you have more responsibilities, which mean more boredom and potentially more misery. No more summers off, you have to fix things around your living space, and commuting can waste a lot of time if you have to drive yourself. On the flip side, you now have the power to choose what you do! You don't have to take Gen Ed courses anymore or take exams! (Unless this is a negative for you as it is for me.) You can get pets and eat mac and cheese for dinner every night of the week and buy candy!

Having a BA in history is not enough for a career in academia or museums, unfortunately. To become a professor, you absolutely need a PhD, and in museums, you need an MA in museum studies or something related to it. However, if you're feeling miserable now, trying to get on as a professor is ABSOLUTELY going to make it worse - there are almost no jobs and the competition is incomprehensible. You will put in a lot of time and effort and will still be asking yourself ten years down the road, "Did I just waste years and put myself a decade behind my peers who didn't get PhDs?" Museums are not quite as bad but still pretty precarious. I have an MA in fashion museum studies, and I went quite a few years just temping and working in retail while volunteering here and there and writing and blogging, and I felt miserable then because I kept being turned down for good jobs or, worse, ghosted. Even after I got my first permanent job, I eventually got miserable again because the pay was so low and the museum's board was so awful. Now in my second, I am finally happy and sure I'll stay in this job for the rest of my career, but it really took blood, sweat, and tears.

So don't beat yourself up for not having a job in your desired field. It's literally impossible for you to do so with just a BA - you're holding yourself to an unfair standard.

In your comments here (and I believe you made a similar post here before with a different account?) you are very negative on the idea of having a job outside your field and keeping history as a hobby, because you'll be wasting 1/3 of your life on something you're not passionate about. I completely understand - I asked myself many times, "could I possibly be happy doing something other than museum work?" and came back with "no (unless I get a significant other and have a family to be my new passion)" - but try to look at it from another perspective, because that is a very middle/upper-middle-class mindset. The vast majority of people do not care that much about their jobs. They can't afford to. Despite what David Graeber said, people who do manual labor or work as custodians or waiters or cashiers don't always feel satisfied and proud of their work: they just get through the day and then go home to be happy.

There is nothing stopping you from writing about history, if that's what you really love doing. You can do it here on this sub, on a blog, on Twitter or Tumblr, or in a podcast. You can even write books, although you will probably have to establish a solid social media presence to get a publisher interested (except for smaller history presses like Osprey or Pen & Sword, I think). If you're not going to try higher ed, I would strongly urge you to find a job where you can stand the work itself and have a good work environment, and then throw yourself into your passion outside of work hours. (You can also keep a notebook around to write on breaks and in your down time, or a book-book to read.)

What country do you live in? If teaching at a university is your goal then post graduate qualifications would be something to consider. Or a teaching degree could open some doors.

Also look at graduate programs. I completed a BA in history/politics many years ago. Got into a grad program with the Australian Public Service. My work has nothing to do with what I studied but the degree got me in the door.

Good luck

My SIL is an architect for a state park system. Her team has historians, archaeologists, etc, tons of people working together to preserve the parks and their history and heritage. It seems like a really interesting and fulfilling job, plus solid benefits and hours like any govt job.

Now, the amount of jobs like this in the US has to be slim, but I’d definitely encourage you to look into state park jobs or other parks departments in your area.

You might want to look into getting a masters in a field like library science or archives. You could also try looking for writing-related jobs like editing. While libraries can involve very public-facing work, which you've said in other comments you don't like, there are also roles which are less public-facing. Archives and editing are generally even less public-facing.

Don't bother with the MPA - I know someone who earned one at Cornell and ended up working as a teller at a credit union. I did one semester and stopped because it is very similar to law school. Have you considered law school? BTW, I have a degree in history and after struggling for 20 years, I got into technical writing.

I studied History and knew from about 12 that I wanted to study it at university.

After uni I did a brief stint working as a freelance writer/“journalist” and then got into digital marketing purely by accident.

Work in CRM now (email, sms, push marketing) for one of Europes largest fin techs.

My advice is rather simple to be honest. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

Don’t be afraid to roll the dice and try something - I remember when someone asked years ago if I’d consider working in CRM and I thought it sounded bizarre. Measuring numbers and metrics etc when I was used to writing essays on British Seapower. But now making around £70k with a lot more in stock options at my current place. Love CRM and totally fell into it.

Recommend building out your LinkedIn profile with any work experience you’ve done and setting your profile open to opportunities. As long as you’re curious, hard working and keen to learn, there are tons of grad roles out there. Whether it’s in marketing or other industries.

Also don’t be afraid to just message people on LinkedIn about internships that you’ve either seen or even if you haven’t…. Just send a message. Sure…. Most don’t message back. But every now and again you end up chatting to someone.

Hope this is useful

What type of college/university did you go to?

I studied History at a Russell Group. I worked as a teacher for a few years. Then I got a job in tech sales and now make $170k.

Can’t tell you what career to get, but basically any career that doesn’t require a specific degree is open to you.

You need to start building some experience. Don’t work in a factory.

If you can’t get anything you can always head overseas and teach TEFL in China/Japan/Korea etc.

I like sales because I like to persuade people and make money.

You basically need to get some experience. Try a bunch of things until you find something you’re passionate about.

Your passion doesn’t have to be your career. It’s a ridiculous conceit that people promote too much, I think - the idea that you need to do something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life, etc.

So few people have a job they genuinely love, and that’s ok! You shouldn’t wander aimlessly and pass up opportunities because they don’t “do” it for you. Sometimes a job just pays the bills for you to live your life after work and on weekends. History for me has become more of a hobby, and I’m pretty happy with it that way. I make more money than I ever could otherwise and get to spend it on things like traveling abroad and visiting historical sites. Don’t feel like you have to do something perfectly aligned to your degree and your passion.

You mentioned that you're in the US in another comment. I would recommend looking into title and escrow companies. They typically hire people with experience from banks or realtor companies, but you can often get in the door doing customer service, typing, deliveries, or a similar no experience position. The goal for a social science major (in my opinion) would be to work as a title examiner

I graduated several years ago with a BS in History, and fell into Title & Escrow by luck. The job, a title officer or title examiner, is researching properties through the public record (deeds, mortgages, surveys, etc.) to go through the chain of ownership and compile a report that reflects everything that affects the property. It also involves risk assessment and learning some basic legal concepts. As a title examiner, I use the skills of my history degree daily. I get to research constantly, and I get to interact with historical documents all the time. It does require a customer service element, and probably starting in a different position (I did other positions my first year). But it can pay well, is challenging, and (for me) is fulfilling work. It scratches the history itch, utilizes skills I learned in college, and makes me learn every day.

25 year old Irishman here. Because Reddit will delete my comment if I don’t use correct etiquette. F**k direction, contribute and go get fucking rich. Chase the American dream and find a way to get rich. Start anywhere. Deliver pizzas? Work construction? Mow lawns! Make some cookies. Anything just go make money. Nobody knows what there doing and where going and if they say they do and are then your just someone who’s been cast a spell on. Time for you to cast some spells. Get out there and get rocking Rome wasn’t built in a day

Your life is not over at 23, and you are not alone by a long shot. Virtually everyone who graduates with a liberal arts degree and doesn’t go on to some professional degree is in your position. The exceptions, in my experience, are those who come from some wealth, or have a wealthy spouse, and are able to leverage that advantage to fully invest in the academic route.

Before 15 years ago or so, the conventional path for a lib arts major who wanted a solid white collar job was go to law school, and that path is still open even if the market is not as it once was. An option I see many take now is to go into IT - programmer, graphic designer, etc. Believe it or not, a liberal arts background will give you a leg up down the line over those who are purely technically focused. There are many people in IT who are limited by their ability to communicate - both in writing and spoken.

Whatever you do, nothing is stopping you from pursuing side gigs that are history related or pursuing it as a pastime. You should definitely look for social opportunities - volunteer at a museum or look for clubs to join that involve history. You’ll make like minded friends or perhaps mentors who can help you in your journey.

I love history and I thoroughly enjoyed getting my BA in history but if you want to be a historian, you’ll have to go back to school and fight like hell to get a job. When I was 20, my mom asked me what I was going to do when I finished college and I had no idea. She sent me info on a couple master’s programs in nursing (she’s a nurse practitioner) so I enrolled in the prereqs while I finished my BA in history and got a MS in nursing. I won’t lie and say it’s “my passion” but it’s a good field to be in, lots of specialities so you won’t get bored, can move anywhere and find work, pays enough to support yourself and a family. You have to find something. 🤷‍♀️