Okay, those of you who have been in college, what are college history classes like.  Are they fascinating, like reading about history normally, or a waste of time, like high school social studies classes?  I'm trying to decide between history and French as a minor/second major, so anyone who has taken French in college could also enlighten me.

The less 'history' you remember from HS the easier college history is.  Most HS history is not history at all, but rather a sales pitch for nationalism.

Quote from: tekla on July 29, 2010, 01:40:32 PM
The less 'history' you remember from HS the easier college history is.  Most HS history is not history at all, but rather a sales pitch for nationalism.

For sure!!
College history was interesting to me and even fun.

So far I have taken American History 1 and 2 which I have not enjoyed but I am biased as I never truly enjoyed History as much. It was very informative though and like Tekla said, entirely different from high school history. I have no experience with French though sorry.

The only history course I took in college was American history. It was a lot like high school history in the sense that it was how Tekla described it. Most of what I've learned of American history has been learned on my own.

Now it kinda seems ironic that when I took Ancient/Medieval (1st & 2nd semesters, respectively) history in high school, it was interesting & informative. That was an AP elective though. Not that many people took it.

Quote from: tekla on July 29, 2010, 01:40:32 PM
The less 'history' you remember from HS the easier college history is.  Most HS history is not history at all, but rather a sales pitch for nationalism.

Yes, this is what I'd hoped to hear.  I just didn't know if college history would be a continuation of the sales pitch; it's good to know it isn't.

Quote from: Mr. Fox on July 29, 2010, 01:38:14 PM
Okay, those of you who have been in college, what are college history classes like.  Are they fascinating, like reading about history normally, or a waste of time, like high school social studies classes?  I'm trying to decide between history and French as a minor/second major, so anyone who has taken French in college could also enlighten me.

History is awesome in college!  You actually learn proper history!  I'm a history major and I love it!  They're definitely not a waste of time. 

It also depends on what type of history you take in college.  I've taken:  Early Medieval European History, Late Medieval European History, Medieval Monasticism, Mississippi History, History Research.  I'm about to take:  Early Renaissance, Survey of Asian Studies, Colonial America, and World War II.

You have a wider range of history classes to choose from though, where I'm at, World History I and II are generally requirements to get a degree of any sort.

Dude, I agree with Gabe. I love all of my history classes in college so far! It also helps that my professors are awesome! And there's so many different topics to choose from.

HS history for me was alright. I liked it but hated it at the same time (probably because my teachers weren't all "YAY AMERICA!" all of the time, actually, they were very realistic people when it came to history).

Trouble is there are very few jobs anymore for people with a BS/BA degree in any liberal arts field.  You wind up with a huge debt load and a job at Starbucks.

History was so painful for me when I took it.  I got As in it in highschool but in college I needed two history classes for my degree and did not too well in one of them and then the other one I put probably 3x as much effort as I would in other classes and still couldn't manage an A in the class.

I got stuck with a very hard TA and grader though and despite whatever I wrote and even had reviewed by my history major friend he would not give me an A on a paper.  So I definitely disliked history after those experiences.  I enjoy languages a lot more myself so I would do French, but that's just me

Well there are chances for jobs with a language at least.

Quote from: tekla on August 01, 2010, 12:17:01 PM
Well there are chances for jobs with a language at least.

Yeah my Soc BA really isn't that useful, but it got me into grad school with a lot more opportunities so I don't need to struggle trying to find some desk job that pays just as much as I earned before college.

Quote from: tekla on August 01, 2010, 12:14:16 PM
Trouble is there are very few jobs anymore for people with a BS/BA degree in any liberal arts field.  You wind up with a huge debt load and a job at Starbucks.

Not with a History major.  I did some major research and there are loads of jobs a History major can get, and a lot of them pay very very well (most of the jobs I've looked at have paid around $75,000 minimum, but I've also looked at government based jobs because that's what I'm interested in).  You can do anything from working as a secretary to teaching to being a historian for a company to archaeology to being a historian for the military (doesn't require joining the military) to working at a museum to plenty of other jobs.  And if you go on to get a Master's you have more of a chance of getting a really good job.  It's a pretty decent field to get into because you can do a variety of things.

Now, a language major can be iffy because it can be harder to find a job (unless you really become bilingual, then you can become an interpretor and those are in high-demand, at least in my area--we only have one interpretor in a good 5 or 6 counties and they really need the help).

I had two history classes in college and hated both of them, they were taught just like most of the high school history classes I had, except a lot harder.  Now anthropology, I absolutely loved.

You're smoking crack if you think that a history major right out of college gets $75K a year jobs unless they have some massive set of other skills, and, at that, it ain't going to be the history degree that does it.  A top engineer, from a top engineering school is lucky to get offered $45K starting these days.

$75K is a bit less than $300 a day, good luck finding people who hire BA historians at $300 per day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year.

If you want to be a $75K a year secretary you're going to need some mad skills at being an executive secretary, most of which you're not being taught.  A basic secretary has to have a solid 60-80 WPM typing speed, an executive secretary is 95WPM and above, with corresponding steno skills and organization skills of the highest order.

Teaching at a university level ain't going to pay that, perhaps not even after tenure (seven or so years, and few published books from now), if you can find a full-time teaching job at that (if anyone even publishes those kind of books anymore).  Other teaching pays less.  I know what the propaganda says, but as a PhD in history (in a very 'in demand' field even) I make more doing union work than I made as a full professor with tenure at a major university, and not by a little bit, but pretty much by a long shot.

Colleges and universities have a vested interest in pushing that line, but its not true anymore.  Most of the people who went into some sort of trade, particularly union trade work, carpenters, pipe-fitters, and other crafts are going to out earn you over your lifetime, and not have a huge debt load to carry either.

I'm not saying I'll get right off the bat--it'll take some work to get there, maybe even having to get a Master's.  Like I said, these are primarily government historian jobs that want you to have a bachelor's in history or an equivalent degree and they sometimes require moving, but the jobs are open almost constantly especially if you want to go overseas because civilians can only stay overseas for 5 years.

Teaching at a university doesn't get much money, it's why I have no intent of teaching at a university (mostly because I've learned that it makes little...but you don't go into teaching for the money anyway).  If I teach it'll be at a DoD school overseas where I get paid a hell of a lot more than I would teaching at a school that wasn't a DoD school plus there's a stipend for housing if you teach overseas.

Most of the jobs I state are government based jobs because it's primarily what I'm interested in and what I'm working towards getting.  Partially because they pay good and often have a stipend for housing if I went overseas and partially because I can't join the military so a government job is the closest I can get.  Hell, I'm even taking classes that have nothing to do with my major so I can have a wider range of skills to do the jobs I want to do.  And most of the jobs I look at are overseas based because it's what I'm interested in, but I have had to look at jobs in the states (rather reluctantly--I want to leave for a few years ASAP) and as long as you knock government based jobs you can possibly find something related to your field that pays decent.

Here's the reality of the last history job that I considered.  This was about 5 years ago, before the current financial downturn.

A major technology museum needed a director of exhibit construction.  The first job would be to build a Newcomen walking beam atmospheric engine out of some parts that had been laying around for a few hundred years or so.  Here is what they required:

-PhD in the subject, and the ability to research and recreate working blueprints out of 200 year old documents (if you could find them).
- Supervisory experience, I would have a crew of 5 who I would hire, fire, train and supervise
- construction skills in carpentry, metal work, electrical wiring and most importantly, in fabrication
- ability to create and follow blueprints
- ability to hire and supervise C-10 level contractors to do the work (like setting the foundation) that we could not do by law (you can not set a foundation for a two story structure in a public building without a licensed commercial contractor doing it no matter how good you are at it)
- ability to write scholastic papers and give presentations at scholastic conferences about the work we were doing
- ability to write the museum guides to the exhibit, and give VIP tours to bigwigs (i.e. major donors)
- ability to maintain said engine in working order
- and the famous "other duties as assigned"

They were offering me much less that $75K, and when they came back at me 6 months later, with a 20% pay increase in the offer, they still were not at $75K (but close) which is not a lot considering all those skill sets, and at that it was in the Midwest - icck.  And I would have had to work full-time, which is not exactly what I'm looking for.

And, just out of curiosity, do you think the DoD puts people, even civilians, on military bases, or teaching military dependents, without investigating them within an inch of their life?  And - this may come as a shock - most of the places where the US has military presence, are not the most scenic, or safest, places in the world.  In a lot of those places you'll be basically confined to base.