Ask Dr. Ross

What's It Like to Be a History Major? Inside the College of Arts and Science Part 3

• Catherine Ross • Season 3 • Episode 10

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We've probably all heard the saying, "If we don't learn from history, we're doomed to repeat it."  But is that really true?  And besides preventing doom, how does studying history help students in their present-day lives?

This week, Dr. Ross and student producer Ashley Worley continue their series highlighting inside stories and college prep practicalities from UT Tyler's History department. Department chair Dr. Colin Snider and senior History major Nixon Gorka join the discussion to share what's really happening in history classes. If you're choosing your degree, preparing for college life, or just curious about other experiences in higher ed, this series is for you. 

Have more questions about life inside a History department? Email us at ADRquestions@gmail.com or leave a comment below. We'd love to hear from you!  

Want to learn more or connect with UT Tyler's Department of History? Click the link below! 

-Department webpage: https://www.uttyler.edu/academics/colleges-schools/arts-sciences/departments/biology/

SPEAKER_01:

So, as you all have probably figured out, one of the goals of this podcast is to educate folks about what goes on at universities. And the central college in most universities was the College of Arts and Sciences.

SPEAKER_00:

For this series, we're going to be introducing each of our wonderful departments in the College of Arts and Sciences by bringing you a top professor in that department and one of the top students as well. We hope that this is very helpful to you as you're choosing your major or just wanting to learn more about what to expect from college life in general. Thank you for listening and we hope you enjoy.

SPEAKER_01:

His research focuses on a variety of social and political issues that revolve around military dictatorships and democratic regimes in Latin America, focusing especially on Brazil. The first question I wanted to ask you is what do you teach in college history classes?

SPEAKER_03:

We sort of teach two different things, I would say, in two different levels. For our incoming freshmen and for sophomores who are taking those core curriculum courses, whether it's the US History One or Two courses or the World Civilizations courses. It's largely a means to sort of get students to reconsider what history is and how it pertains to their lives and how it tells us about different peoples, cultures, moments, the sort of the cliche line there, the past is a foreign country. For the freshman courses and those core curriculum courses, a lot of students come in not necessarily knowing exactly what history is. That I will regularly ask who hates history and just they'll hesitantly raise their hands and I'm not mad. I say, I don't know you. Go ahead. And I ask why, and I can mouth along with them because they say it's a bunch of names and dates, and that's absolutely not what history is. History is a way of understanding the past, of thinking about change over time, sort of identifying patterns in history and the ways that the past has shaped the present or in ways that we can draw on lessons from the past. So I'll tell them, if I if it were just names and dates, I wouldn't have notes in front of me. I dump those names and dates on the papers. That's not what's cluttering my head. It's a way of thinking about the past rather than data collection necessarily or just memorization. And so largely it's trying to get students to both understand this other kind of thinking that goes beyond what they're typically expected of in high school, and also to get them to reconsider what the stories of the past tell us about the past and the present. And then at the upper division level, it's sort of magnifying those efforts. We're trying to get students to do deeper dives into subject areas they may not know or even subject areas they're familiar with. You regularly get students saying, Oh, we have to study the past or else we're doomed to repeat it, which is not true. The past doesn't repeat, but the better quote is Mark Twain, right? The past doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes. So helping students identify those rhymes and really trying to doubly equip them to think as historians, but also to figure out how to use those broader skills beyond the classroom so that it's not, you know, students often come in thinking, I have to teach. Like you don't have to teach. There's any number of careers you can build out of these skills. It's a field much like English, where you're not sort of bottlenecked into one particular type of job. You have lots you can do. And so we're trying to give them the skills that allow them to do the widest range while finding the things they enjoy.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And we're going to talk about the possible professional uses of all of the department teachings. So our other guest is Nixon Gorka. And you've been a history major for how long now, Nixon? Two years. Do you want to tell us a little bit about what you think history is?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I think you did a wonderful job explaining it, but it informs the present in ways that a lot of people don't understand. And being a history major, you look into that and you learn about how it can help you right now and help you with just interpersonal things or politics, everything. It also helps with just being able to read documents, be able to read them correctly and understand that people sometimes don't have the best motives, whether or not they're speaking to you or you're reading what they say or you're seeing it on the news. And it helps you definitely know how to write. You write a lot and you get better at it. So, what courses in history have you taken so far? At UT Tyler, I took Dr. Snyder's Cold War course. That was my first one here. I am currently in the methods course, which is research and methods. You had to write the paper, you had to do the thing. It's very exciting. I love it, but it can be difficult.

SPEAKER_01:

Were your high school courses exciting so that that's where you started your interest in history?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, definitely. I had the privilege of having some very, very good history teachers. They all had advanced degrees in history, and it was all AP tests and AP classes, and they went very in-depth, and it really did, I guess, stir within me the interest.

SPEAKER_01:

And I think that's important. One of the things that I've noticed over the years is that when you have a good teacher in the junior and senior level years, then that gets you really ready to hop into a more collegiate level. Because there is a big difference, isn't there? So, Dr. Snyder, are there different tracks of history? Do students study world history, American history, Latin American history? Can they do that? Or do you plan a kind of wide smorgasbord?

SPEAKER_03:

So it's a bit of both, really, in addition to the required U.S. history one and two courses. They have to take nine hours of U.S. history, six hours of European history, and six hours of world history. But what they do within that is entirely up to them. So if you like, oh I I don't like the new history, I like old stuff, then I want to do nothing after the Renaissance. Well then you can take ancient Rome or medieval Europe or Renaissance Europe. But if you're like, I hate the old stuff, give me all the new things, and you can take 20th century Europe and World War II, and saying with world history or with US history, that we sort of have probably anywhere from eight to ten courses at least in each of those three sub-areas so that students really can get the most out of what interests them while we ensure that they're getting as wide a range of historical content and knowledge as possible.

SPEAKER_02:

So, Nixon, how many courses have you taken now? I took Cold War, modern American diplomacy, history of African Americans, history of the British Empire, and I think that's a I could be missing one.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I'm gonna have to ask you about your history of the British Empire, because that's my area. So can you tell me a little bit about what you did in that class? I think what we're trying to do here is to help folks who might be interested in doing these courses to find out from someone who's done it what was it like.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, well, that one was amazing. It was taught by Dr. Link, so it was a completely virtual class, and it really does open up an accessibility for students who don't really have the time to be able to come to campus. So I was very happy to take that because I could still learn the content while also being at home and watching the lectures and doing all of that. She does a wonderful job sparking interest within her students. It's a little bit hard with a completely asynchronous course to do that, but she has wonderful stories that are integrated into her lectures. And then also the reading is always amazing. So even if you are not necessarily interested in what the course is talking about, you walk away interested.

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Dr.

SPEAKER_01:

Snyder, what is it that you love about teaching history?

SPEAKER_03:

Originally it was just a passion for the content and wanting to share that with others. That's sort of how I got into history in the first place, is just I really liked doing this. Just learning about the past and the wild stories there are and the ways it often sounds a little familiar in places you wouldn't expect, and sort of passing that along and pretty quickly learned that high school was not going to be for me in terms of teaching, and was given good advice on going to graduate school and teaching at the university level instead. And along the way, as its sort of career developed through graduate school and whatnot, I got to see how many students really weren't exposed to the kind of quality critical analysis and thinking in high school that makes this stuff so interesting. So, in some ways, a reward also then became like that, even if they still hated history and never took another history class, they could at least walk out of there having a sense of kinds of questions they could ask about the world around them and sort of thinking about these things in a slightly critical, non-linear, non-sort of math science-y way of one plus one equals two, but just sort of broadening their understanding. And you often see that in their faces really like, wait, what?

SPEAKER_01:

Did that really happen?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, what else have I not been told about? And so I think it became an avenue to provide my own small way of contributing to helping people be more well-rounded in how they think about the world around them.

SPEAKER_01:

Now, Nixon is nodding sagely as you say that. Has that been your experience with your history classes?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I fully agree. I think it makes you a better global citizen just in the sense that you have a larger understanding for the world around you and why people are the way that they are. You understand humanity in a different way from history than you can really get from any other discipline.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, you know, I teach British literature, but I always teach the history along with it, because I don't think you can understand the literature if you don't understand what was going on in their world and what were their cultural pressures and what was going on economically and all of those things. Do you study much about the economic history in any of your courses, Dr. Snyder?

SPEAKER_03:

Reluctantly I will tell students that I'm the first to say that no historian likes all forms of history across the board. And I don't like ancient history, I'm just couldn't not care less about the Roman Empire. And I don't have the head for economic history, but that doesn't make it avoidable. You know, like I do dictatorships. We talk about what neoliberalism is and what neoliberal economic policies are and their impact. So I do touch on economic typically more through a social lens of, you know, growth doesn't necessarily equal development. And what do we mean by those two things? That if a metric is measuring growth, okay, great, the country's per capita income is skyrocketed, but if 90% of that wealth is going to 10% of the population, you're not developing the country even if it's growing. So largely when it comes to economics, it's more like how does this affect everyday lives rather than the more social science-y economic model.

SPEAKER_01:

Are there schools of thought about how history is taught?

SPEAKER_03:

Aaron Ross Powell There are schools and theories of how to do this, but I think it largely hinges more on how do you approach this subject matter, right? That some people sort of pull on this von Rank notion of history is telling things as they actually occurred. So that's sort of where the postmodern linguistic turn in the 60s and 70s pops in, where they basically say, okay, but who's doing the telling? What are the documents that you're looking at? Whose voices are included, but whose voices are excluded. So I think really at the undergraduate level that you can spot differences in people's teaching, but it's not along anything ideology-based. It's really contingent upon what interests them. So that I do more social history and political history, so it's sort of blending those two things together. So things like social movements, fighting for human rights in the world, the Cold War and its geopolitics. Dr. Link, her specialty is Irish history and World War I and World War II. So she does on the more social side, but on warfare, right? Dr. Stith is interested in environmental history, and so that's really reflected in a lot of his coursework. So we all have our own areas of interest, and I think that actually that diversity across any department is a reward for the students because it allows them to get sort of the full sample platter rather than just having a bunch of professors who all do the same approach and they only know about that one approach even if indirectly.

SPEAKER_01:

So it sounds to me like history professors in this university tell a lot of good stories, tell them in a way that does not focus on dates and names, but rather trends and attitudes and things like that. When you think about your own studies right now, Nixon, are you thinking about going to graduate school in history? Yes, I am.

SPEAKER_02:

I actually applied for the program here for masters. Well, it really just helps you understand how and why people have done things. You learn, at least during your undergraduate years, all of this history and you learn about all of these historians and what they say. But that I feel like historiography will hopefully make everything make sense at that point, or it at least give you more questions, but it will kind of connect the dots and like why things are the way they are. Now, Dr.

SPEAKER_01:

Snyder got a big grin on his face when you said that. You want to tell us what you're smiling about, Dr. Snyder?

SPEAKER_03:

The graduate historiography class I teach, I'm fully comfortable saying is it's everyone's nightmare. It's the one they dread because it's the most abstract. That's where we do get into some of those more boring debates. I tell the students right off the bat, you're not going to know what's going on, and that's okay. Some weeks will do better than others, and it'll vary for each person. But apparently my colleagues referred to it as a class that tears you down so that you can be built back up. And I think that's fair because what it really is, is it's getting people to think about the philosophy of history. Like what exactly does this mean as a human enterprise? What are the various ways we can think about all these types of questions? So we go really through, like about since the Enlightenment, a good chunk of different ways to think about human interactions, ways to interrogate the past. What are the archives and how do we understand them? How do we write? What what is global history? What is the power of everyday people in everyday lives versus political history in the lives of the elites? So it's it's a lot of theoretical discussion. So the undergraduate methods class is sort of here's how to do research and write a big paper for the first time in your life, probably.

SPEAKER_01:

What's a big paper? How big is it?

SPEAKER_03:

25 to 30 pages.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh my goodness. Have you done one already? I'm currently doing it. And what is it on?

SPEAKER_02:

It's going to be on spy scandals in the 1960s.

SPEAKER_01:

Spy scandals. Oh, that sounds like fun. So 25 pages is a lot.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, well, I will admit there has been some setbacks. The British thankfully have a pretty good archival system, at least online, but not all of those archives are accessible to people not willing to pay for them. So that has been a setback. But I have fortunately been able to find a few things, few documents, either in the British National Archives or the British National Newspaper Archives that have helped me along the way.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, learning how to get into those databases is a big part of the project, isn't it? But we have wonderful librarians here, research librarians, who can help you find that. Do you have students and classmates, Nixon, that say, oh, history and give you a hard time about it?

SPEAKER_02:

Or your family give you a hard time about it? I think the hardest time that I've been given was when I decided to go into history. The Woodlands is a very oil-based town. So everybody I know was going into pre-med engineering or business administration. And although those are, you know, great things, a lot of people going into that don't really understand. Oh, why do you want to go into history? What are you gonna do with that?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's always the next question. What will you do with it? And I think what Dr. Snyder said to us is that you can do a lot with it.

SPEAKER_00:

So I'm a mass communications student, and honestly, I don't have a ton of exposure to history other than random things I research when I'm working on a book. So past learning about it in high school, like that's my only exposure to it. And I imagine maybe that's the situation for some of these other students who don't go into these types of fields. So from that angle, what are some of the applications that you think make history so important to study at a collegiate level, outside of being professor and having, you know, generally an informed populace?

SPEAKER_03:

Aaron Powell It certainly exposes students and anybody really to different societies, different cultures, and even within our own country, right? The the cultures of the past are different than they are now in some ways. We can identify their progression, but they they're different. So I think in some ways the mere act of learning about different peoples and different cultures and different moments allows us to better appreciate the common qualities of humanity and to also be more empathetic towards difference and willing to understand and respect difference. I also think there's nothing quite like history, and admittedly I'm a little biased, but I think the reward of the humanities more generally is they they provide you with a kind of intellectual flexibility and a wide variety of skills like writing, communication, et cetera, that are applicable across a variety of fields. But the one place I would, in my own defense, say history has the leg up is ours are real people. And I think because of its reality as just lived experiences, it's also a pretty impressive school for teaching and guiding you in finding your own path for your own ethics, values, and sort of approach to the world because of all of the horrific events in the past where you can say, well, what would I have done in those situations? Or the heroic examples, right? It equips you to deal with ambiguity and context and complexity in practical senses in ways that I think a lot of other fields do not.

SPEAKER_01:

Aaron Ross Powell Now, Colin, is there any particular person from history or period of history that you just totally geek out on?

SPEAKER_03:

Oh yeah, it's definitely and this is such a depressing sentence, it's Latin American dictatorships. It was definitely the source of about a semester-long existential crisis when I was in grad school. We're just dealing with atrocity Olympics now and silver and bronze medalists. So it took some wrestling with why am I so interested in this. But I think what it really came down to was horror. The horror that people could let themselves get to such a place mentally where this was entirely acceptable behavior, and trying to understand how and why. It's not just a sort of parade of pointless atrocities, but it you also get highlights of humanity at their best, right? That this is also when the human rights movement really becomes an international thing. So it's both, I think, a sort of a microcosm of humanity at both its worst and its best, and understanding how our own choices can get us to either of those two roads. And we talk about this in class laws, like the need for students to have their own sense of historical conscience, by which we simply mean that you're aware that you are yourself a historical actor, that the things you do now will be in the history books in the future. Not that your name will be necessarily, but that if they say, you know, the public overwhelmingly supported this person or the public voted for that person or whomever, that if you did either of those things, you're in the history book. So sort of how do you want to be remembered historically as well as Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, Nixon, do you geek out on any particular part of the history?

SPEAKER_02:

I will say I feel like a lot of history majors do have the crisis of being like, oh my gosh, why do I like such horrible things? So as you mentioned, Second World War is just very interesting. I think to a lot of people and myself included, just like, how did these things happen? And how do people get away with it afterwards? At least that's what I've found interesting about that period of history. I like to focus specifically on intelligence history. So when you graduate, are you planning to be a professor as well, or did you have something else in mind? I would love to do that. We'll see where life takes me. But I think being able to share history and to write about it and to learn more about it throughout your entire life is a privilege that I would love to have.

SPEAKER_00:

That's awesome. And so, in regard to like jobs, do you have any classmates or do you know of students who like what were their career options outside of being a professor? Because you mentioned there's kind of this assumption that that's the only option for history majors, but it's not really.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, we've had students end up in any number of fields, and some of them are more obviously linearly connected to history. So we have one who's now the head of an archival system in Colorado. We've had other students go into the library sciences, but really, and this comes back to something we mentioned earlier about it's giving you a wide range of skills. So we've had plenty of students make a career in the private sector or even running small business, but basically they have these kinds of decision-making skills and they can gather a lot of data and contextualize it fairly quickly. I think some fields they're so like whether it's pre-med or nursing or engineering, right? It's just that's going to be what you're going to go do now. And some students are thrilled about that, but I think a lot of times folks don't realize, like, what if I hate it in eight years? And with a degree in the humanities or the social sciences, even, I think you have that chance where you can go do a job. And if you hate it in eight years, you've got skills where you can go do a different job and you don't have to go back to school. Whereas in nursing, let's just say, you know, if burnout gets you in six years and you're like, well, now what? Like, well, I know how to nurse. Well, what else do you know how to do? That's it. That's the list. So yeah, I think part of it is just we have students go out all over the place. Obviously, a lot of go into high school teaching and want to, right? That that's sort of what they've entered into the field for. But I think it's largely then we're really working at getting students to think about what are you learning more, not just content-wise, but what skills are you learning so that when you go out there, you can identify what interests you in ways that tap into these skills that even if it's not immediately visibly a historian. Like I've had friends who've ended up with PhDs in history, but they're in editing work. Or I've had a friend who ended up working in immigration services where their job is basically identifying human rights violators who are here illegally that we should be getting out because of the human rights violation part, or they're here even legally, but basically the terms of like, well, you lied on your application because you were tied to these horrors. So working on the legal cases on that area, or I have a colleague from grad school who ended up being the historian of the National Forestry Service with a PhD in history, right? So you can do any number of things. So when like what do I do with that? It sort of becomes what do you want to do with it? As opposed to other fields where it's like, well, what do I do with that? You do this.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, that's always the big question about college. You know, what are you gonna do with it? And sometimes we can answer it, and sometimes only the student can answer it. I think you all have really done a good job of helping us to see that studying history is about today as well as the past. It gives you a perspective. And that may be the biggest thing that I imagine that comes from historical training. So is there any last thing you want to say to folks out there who are thinking about studying history? I mean, obviously just do it.

SPEAKER_02:

Just do it. I had so many people tell me not to. And obviously I'm speaking as an undergraduate student. I don't know where I'll be, but I'm extremely lucky that I did. It derives from a love for history. So a lot of people will say, Oh, well, like I only like to read Wikipedia articles at 2 a.m. Well, that also can be a love for history that you get a degree in. You can move that elsewhere and also have a livelihood like off of that. Or just like YouTube videos or video essays, just very niche things that you enjoy, you can actually further that.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, Professor Snyder, is there anything you want to say? One last thing that you wish folks could hear?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I would say I guess it's okay if you don't like history because nothing is for everybody. But I would let yourself learn it from the professionals first before you decide if you really don't like it. And if you like it, but like, but what am I going to do with that? Again, I think the answer is what do you want to do with it? It can be professional, but it also can be personal, right? That there's plenty of personal learning you can do about yourself and how you see the world and how you approach situations that I think history is not solely, but is uniquely equipped to prepare you for.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you for coming.

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Catherine Ross

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Ashley Worley

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