What the History Major Prepares You to Do

What I've heard from alumni over the years

In addition to writing four times a week at Substack, I also manage social media for Bethel’s Department of History, Philosophy, and Political Science. Among other platforms, we’ve inherited a WordPress blog that I founded in 2012 for the then-History Department. Now called CC 4th (after the floor we occupy at Bethel), the blog has featured dozens of interviews that I’ve conducted with History (and now Philosophy and Poli Sci) majors who have gone into a wide variety of occupations, from attorney to dentist, corporate executive to nautical archeologist. This past Monday I added someone who’s not one of our alumni, but a new Bethel vice president who did study history in college and now works in what may seem like an unexpected field: nonprofit fundraising.

Invariably, I not only ask my interview subjects why they picked the History major in the first place, but also whether their undergraduate studies of the past connect in any way to their chosen career. Keep in mind that, apart from a large number of social studies teachers and tinier group of public historians, most of our alumni are not doing anything that directly relates to the historical study of the past.

So what’s the connection? Why was the History major good preparation for so very many seemingly unrelated careers?

Here’s what they’ve most often said…

A word cloud generated by the responses I’ve received when I’ve asked how the History major prepared former students for what they’re doing now