preparation

[bedlamsbard]

Okay, so I came to a realization in the shower, and I'm going to put it out now, just so I can articulate it, and, I don't know, wake up to soothing comments in the morning or something.

So one of the reasons I'm so worried about grad school, aside from it being, you know, fucking grad school, is that I'm not entirely sure what to study, or what I want to study. I know what I want to do -- teach history, preferably ancient and medieval -- but that still leaves me with a quandary of what to study. I mean, that's sort of fast expanse of time and space, you know? That's everything from about 800 BC to around, oh, 1500 AD, covering Europe, the Middle East, Asia Minor, the Far East, and probably some regions that I've either forgotten or conflated with the others. (Um, sorry.)

And the thing is that I don't feel qualified to make a decision now, as an undergrad, on where and when and what I want to concentrate on. I mean, with my background, my training, I've maybe been able to take one or two classes on these subjects. A class on the Byzantine Empire, a class on medieval Scandinavia, a class on medieval England; I guess I got lucky and have the opportunity to take multiple classes on classical Greece and classical Rome, but that doesn't make me feel any more prepared to theoretically spend the next ten years of my life studying just that. If anything, less so, because I have a better idea of how much more is out there and how behind I am, and that's not even counting the language requirements to get into a graduate program in the classics. Like, I have to decide now, on the basis of one class, what I want to study for the rest of my life? What if I change my mind? What if I decide that actually, while Republican Rome is really really interesting, I find medieval Iceland even more interesting? Or that, sure, the late Byzantine Empire is great (read: hilarious and beautifully, tragically doomed...wait, no wonder I like the Byzantines), but what I'd really like to do is become a Shakespeare scholar. (Because the world has a shortage of those!) It doesn't help that for most universities, there are separate programs for Classical Studies, Medieval Studies, History, Scandinavian Studies, English, and so on and so forth. Which makes sense for them, I mean, they get to specialize.

But I have to make a choice now, and I don't exactly have a lot to base that choice on. And I have no idea what it's like at other universities. I mean, I'm convinced that at other schools, the students who are going to be applying to the same programs I am have spent the last four years of their undergraduate degree figuring out exactly what they want to study and getting all the requirements filled, and not doing what I did, which was sort of browse around for a year and a half before finally stumbling on a subject that I really passionately enjoyed. And then another one. And then I realized that within those two subjects were actually approximately a million more, and I have to choose one, and I'm not prepared for any of them. I don't have the training, I don't have the background; I can't figure out to what extent it is or is not my fault. I didn't take Latin, or Greek, or French, or German, or Italian, or any of the languages that someone who wants to go for a grad degree in the history, Medieval Studies, or Classical Studies fields is supposed to have taken. I haven't taken more than a couple of classes, tops, in specific subjects that I may or may not want to study. And part of that is because my university doesn't offer more than one of those classes. Part of that is because there's only one ancient history professor in the history department, and he has a sideline in medieval Scandinavia, and only one professor whose thing is medieval England (and really, her specialty is, I believe, early modern England), and maybe the odd professor here or there who really like odd little niche subjects that aren't his/her specialty but that they still like to teach a class in once in a while. (My Age of the Vikings professor is Roman numismatist, so there you go. He also really likes military history, but his thing is coins.) We have a Russian historian, who managed to scare me off, and I think another medieval historian and an early modern historian, and that's it. What if my yet-unknown love is the Holy Roman Empire? I may never know. I can't help but be convinced that other students at other universities have had three or four years of background in the subject they want to study, and have I don't. I can't. There's no way for me to get that, even if I stay at Tulane for Spring 2012. (And that's not going to matter, as I have to do grad school apps in Fall 2011.)

And, you know, the stuff I'm studying? I love it. I love all of it, so much; it's not exactly a recent fad, the Middle Ages, the classical world, the Vikings, this is all stuff I'ved loved since I was just a kid. How am I supposed to make a choice, favor one over the other? I mean, it probably doesn't help that I'm not entirely certain what one does at grad school; the impression I've gotten from DW/LJ people there is that one goes to learn all the things about one very small subject, and learns how to teach university classes. Except that can't be true, because profesors teach several subjects. (At least at my private lliberal arts university; my seminar prof just came back from lecturing at the UW and is really glad he teaches here, because at big public universities, your topics of teaching are apparently much more limited. He got very wistful; he's been teaching at Tulane for thirty-three years, his entire career as a professor. Can you imagine that? Your entire career, at one university.)

I just -- I don't know. I don't feel prepared, to make a decision, to actually enter grad school in whatever field I do decide on. I can't help but think that other students, my peers at other universities, have all the preparation they might ever need or want. (And in theory, I know this can't be true, but LOGIC HAS NO PLACE HERE OKAY?) And in some ways I'm definitely not prepared (read: languages), which doesn't help. I just. Gods. I don't know.

Comments

[harpers_child]

take a deep breath. no one knows what they want to do for the rest of their life at your age. when i was still in school i had idea that six years later i'd be reading up on victorian erotica and norse myths. i'm a huge mythology nerd so the norse myths aren't a surprise. but victorian porns? that's just something i picked up out of the blue. (it's full of spanking and dub con and the occasional something you can tell is an attempt at sex ed.) there was a point in there.

oh yes: YOU DON'T HAVE TO CHOOSE WHAT YOU WANT TO READ ABOUT FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE RIGHT NOW. (read here also includes various research things because for me that generally involves reading. i've never had a chance to go dig for things in egypt for example.)

i promise that most people don't know what they want to do for the rest of their lives either. that's always that kid who decided to be a doctor at three, you know? you can always learn languages or have a good selection of dictionaries. you don't have to be daniel jackson.

[juniperphoenix]

I think you are vastly overestimating the preparation and decisiveness of your peers. Just by asking yourself these questions, you're probably further along than most.

Also, an undergraduate liberal arts education is supposed to be about breadth. That's why they have you take general-education courses and electives outside your major. I think the value of a broad education has gotten lost on a lot of people these days because of, e.g., the rise of undergraduate schools of business — many students seem to be excessively career-oriented and obsessed with taking only exactly what they think they need to obtain what they think is their dream job. (Not that I think you're doing this, but the attitude is so pervasive that it bleeds over and creates unhealthy expectations even for people who know better.) I don't have to tell you how interconnected all these periods of history and parts of the world are — you already know that. No matter which one you eventually decide to focus on, having a broad background to draw on will be immensely valuable. There's plenty of time to specialize later.

[resolute]

Deeeeeeeeeeep breath. Yeah.

I went to a math-and-science boarding school for high school. I went to college and majored in drugs and women. When it was time to choose my major, I picked the thing I was closest to finishing and just did it -- philosophy with a minor in history. I then worked in a mail room, went to Central America with my girlfriend of nine months, temped for a year, and went to technical college for six months. Now I'm an air traffic controller and a writer.

You will pick something. Based on the best information you have at the time. And it will likely not work out the way you think it will. But it WILL work out.

The thing about history is -- you will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER come to the end of what there is to learn. That's its pleasure and pain. Which you KNOW already, hence the anxiety. It sounds like you should have faith in your goals and your process, and take a mishmash of classes that pique your interests, and pick a major in ONE of them. Because that's the way forward, you know?

[bessemerprocess]

Oddly enough, just like the person above me, I also went to a math and science boarding school. My BA is in Anthropology with a minor in Poli Sci (and most of one in Chemistry). My MA is about to be in Public History. The Ph. D. programs I'm applying for are all in History of Technology.

First off, I've been in two MA programs, and you'd be over qualified for both of them. I did them without any undergrad history class after my American history seminar for freshmen. Most people go into an MA sort of with a field of study in mind, generally it's something pretty broad, like say, Ancient and Medieval History.

Even for your Ph. D. you have to take a major field and two or three minor fields. Depending on the schools I'm applying for, my fields tend to look like, major field: Late Atlantic World, minor field: History of Technology, minor field: Material Culture, minor field: 19th Century America. Because you generally teach classes (at least at the beginning) that are related to your fields, so I could teach things like the second half of the American seminar (America post 1865, usually), I could teach the second half of World or Western Civ, and then topic courses in Technology and Material Culture. And since the more class you can teach, the better, having related but diverse fields seems to be a good idea, as far as I can tell.

Plus, once you have a Ph. D., as long as you are doing proper research, you can pretty much research whatever you want. I have a couple profs who's first and second books are on really different topics.

[sporky_rat]

I can't help but be convinced that other students at other universities have had three or four years of background in the subject they want to study, and have I don't.

Ahem.

Let me make this perfectly clear (as if the Newsreader wasn't helping already).

Bull~shit!

There is no way that anyone at any college/uni right at your level knows what the hell they want to do. No way. You are way overestimating your so called 'peers'. Relax. You don't have to decide right now what you want to do in grad school, because with your background, you'll be able to do anything 'history' (and in that I include all social studies except for maybe modern geography) related. You have a breadth and width of subjects that not everybody has a chance to take. Those classes you're mentioning up there? No option of them here at USM. You'll be just as well prepared as the rest of them, no matter what you take.

[lady_songsmith]

What everyone else said, with a side of "THIS is what you have advisors for" -- IME, advisors are generally not actually so great about the whole course-requirement thing, because they don't keep up with changing uni rules, but they ARE pretty good at calming the WHAT DO I DO WITH MY LIFE panics, because everyone they advise every year does it at least once, so they stay in practice. Mine kept an extra box of tissues in the drawer behind her advisee files, if that tells you anything.