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so im doing a degree in ancient history
minoring in cultural criticism (complicated set up)
thinking of changing my degree to ancient history and cultural criticism (at the moment id be dropping CC in June)
what do you guys think i could do job-wise if i didnt go on to do a masters/PhD?
Paper or plastic?
Museum tour guideQuote:
Originally Posted by sailor jack
Although, a number of companies now don't really care what your actual degree is, they just want someone with at least a bachelors.
dont understand..Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmosfear
museum tour guide would be an ideal jobQuote:
Originally Posted by KT.
in the summers between each semester
and i agree with the not caring thing but id like to do something slightly related and id be grateful if people could suggest some companies etc.
typically this would mean something else, but in the current economic climate this is referring to the option of salvaging either paper or plastic out of landfills for a livingQuote:
Originally Posted by sailor jack
ah, cambridge is becoming more and more like calcutta every day.
You are unlikely to find work that's related to your field with any sort of history degree unless you have a Masters at a minimum. This is especially true with an ancient history degree. Museums, historical foundations, etc. are your best bet (hope you weren't dreaming of a high salary). Most companies that will hire someone with an ancient history BA are just going to stick them in a non-technical, entry-level generic deskjob that has nothing to do with ancient history, your degree will just serve as proof that you aren't a total imbecile. Don't be surprised if you end up making like $18/hour doing what amounts to clerical work.
I don't know how far into college you are, but if you think you are going to graduate with a BA and jump right into a job that's directly relevant to your field and interests, you have a harsh reality check coming up in your future. People with BAs usually don't have that luxury, you should have gone for an engineering degree if you wanted to do that.
Seriously consider grad school. That will open up a much broader swath of academia, etc. for you.
EDIT: Other options include military via the OCS route (Iraq and Afghanistan are home to a lot of ancient history, right?), or taking the Foreign Service exam but that's probably a stretch.
i dont mean i want a job that is primarily based on my degree as soon as I leave.
I'm only half way through my first year at the moment so im just beginning to think about what modules i should take next year to really boost my chances, as in taking modules relevant to any job prospects you guys suggest.
Grad school is what i'm aiming for but it depends on my bachelors grades
and $18 an hour? id be happy with that. im currently on 0
This.Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmosfear
Hope you really love history because you are gonna be poor forever.
I think your best bet would be talking with your professors or counselor about what your job options are if you graduate with only a BA in ancient history.
Hah yeah all "real job" pay sounds great when you're still in school being a broke-ass student eating canned tuna for dinner, but $18/hour is a lot less to a working stiff than it sounds like to a college student. I mean to be fair, that's like $36K/year (before taxes) which is definitely fine for a recent graduate; you can easily live on that, especially if you don't insist on having an apartment all to yourself. But my point was that with a BA in history, you will probably start off in some comparatively low-paying job that has little or nothing to do with history. I'm not saying you'll be mired in poverty or anything like that.Quote:
Originally Posted by sailor jack
heyheyhey youre all forgetting the cultural criticism which will probably be my masters if i get the grades
Well it sounds like one of those super-squishy fields and I have no idea what it entails so I have no idea what you could do with it, sorry. I suspect that most other posters on this forum will tell you something similar. What you really need to do is talk to your profs, counselors, etc. like KT said. Keep your eyes open for career fairs and that sort of thing for your department or school (as in your college's School of Humanities or whatever your major is under), and hit them up when you can. Those sorts of resources will be far more helpful to you than the comments of anyone on this forum. If you really want good advice from a forum, I'd look for one with a much larger and more mature user base. On a forum like SA, you are much more likely to find users who will be able to say stuff like "Yeah I majored in cultural criticism (or ancient history or whatever) and here's what I did with it and here's some advice".
ok thanks
i was just looking for some general advice so this stuffs all good, thank you
Oh, I thought Sailor Jack was a Britfag...
If you LOVE ancient history/cultural criticism (I mean really love it and not just look at it as something to get your degree in); are willing to incur even more student loan debts, independently wealthy or competitive enough of a student to be one of the few that can get a grant or assistantship; and want to teach in these fields for a living or want to do some variety of research...
THEN go to graduate school.
For example, my best friend was originally getting a degree in sociology to teach in secondary education, but now he's decided to go all the way and pursue a doctorate since he'd ideally like to be a research professor.
Otherwise, for these fields, it's not worth going further. If you were in something more practical, such as engineering or a hard science, then a Masters would make sense, but a generic Masters degree won't increase you chance of employment in the same way as does a generic Bachelors.
However, I think that KT and Syme are somewhat mistaken about museums. They would probably be looking for someone with a background in the visual arts, which he doesn't have. Now maybe he could be involved in the translation of ancient documents, modern books on ancient history or philosophy, or something along those lines, though I can't imagine him finding a position in something like this without at the very least a Masters.
So again, your most viable choices related specifically to your degree are going higher up the ivory tower until you're at its hoary pinnacle, teaching at a lower level like high school or even teaching at a 4 year university with a Masters, or maybe being involved in the publishing of historical or philosophical texts that are either translated primary sources or modern works.
May I ask a question? Why did you pick this degree if you didn't even know what you could possibly do with it? I mean ancient history and cultural criticism don't seem like very marketable disciplines. Did you really not even think about what you would do with the rest of your life when you decided to major in these degrees, and you're only giving any thought to this after the fact? You really needed us to tell you that you're probably just going to be a wage slave in some company or at best middle management in constant fear of being down-sized?
I'm sorry, it's just that I wish more people would consider careers in engineering or science rather than getting some generic liberal arts degree and hoping for the best. It just annoys me that even in this economic climate we're sorely lacking workers in technical jobs while people with generic college degrees can't find work.
More like stretching to the breaking point, even aside from the fact that the military wants knowledge of modern, not ancient, Iraq and Afghanistan (well, it's pathetic that they don't even seem to care about that either.)Quote:
Originally Posted by Syme
I don't know how generalized his knowledge his, but ancient history degrees usually focus primarily upon Roman and Greek history anyway. Iraq was home to the Fertile Crescent civilizations which were some of the most ancient ones in proximity to Europe, and there was a period in which Afghanistan was heavily Hellenized as reflected in its almost Classical looking Buddhist sculpture, but really I don't think his knowledge is very applicable to the history of either country.
Well, he's not. He's Welsh.Quote:
Originally Posted by sycld
Oh whatever... by "British," I meant "from the UK," not "English"...Quote:
Originally Posted by simonj
According to the infallible wikipedia:
Quote:
The British (also known as Britons, informally Brits, or archaically Britishers) are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, one of the Channel Islands, or of one of the British overseas territories, and their descendants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_(people)
good thing you cited your sources there sycld or else i would have believed that welsh people have nothing to do with britain
This.Quote:
Originally Posted by coqauvin
I mean, Christ sycld, give me some credit. Wales is like an hour away from where I live.
If I had graduated from college making $36k/year, I would have considered myself a failure.Quote:
Originally Posted by Syme
Sailor Jack: my "paper or plastic" comment is a joke about bagging groceries. You'll be asking customers whether they would prefer paper or plastic bags. In the interest of being constructive, here's what you need to do:
Take advantage of your university's resources. I am sure you have some type of career center or similar service that maintains relationships with various companies, schools, and recruiting services. If nothing else, talk to them about what you like, and what you might want to do. Part of your tuition is paying for their service, put them to use.
I would focus on using your personal network (family, friends, and friends' family) to find a decent internship or summer job to build your resume. It's perfectly okay to study a field outside of your profession, as long as you have experience relating to the profession (by profession, I am focusing mostly on the commercial sector.) For example, I'm in IT, and I started by getting a competitive internship with a Fortune 100 company through family ties. I was a Biology major, which ostensibly meant I lacked both the technical training and the soft skills necessary for IT.
Many business fields really only require communication and soft skills; those are easy to demonstrate in an interview and through a resume. Your key is going to be setting yourself apart from every business student applying for the sales position, and finding a way to translate the experience you gain from studying [insert major here] into an asset that the company can exploit.
In the opening interview for my current job, I was asked a question that nearly put a knife in my stomach. Every other interview looks at a double major (Biology/Business) with curiosity, and puts a premium on the ability to handle two disparate courses of study. The guy asks me, straight up, "You added a business degree your senior year? Let's say I'm playing devil's advocate. What if those two, unrelated majors, tell me not that you're a good student, but that you don't know what you want and aren't totally committed to a business career?" Major firms spend too much money on recruiting to have new hires leave after 6 months because they didn't understand the industry they got into. How do you turn that around? How do you turn your weakness ("I didn't study a business-related field") into a unique asset? When you can answer that question, you'll ace every interview (and you'll get the interviews by highlighting it in your cover letter.)
How I got the job
sorry, i had thought the people from your english hamlet are so inbred that they no longer realize there is anything beyond their town aside from a gigantic fat queen and a place called "indier" where the brown people come fromQuote:
Originally Posted by simonj
Only those of us who blindly follow this racist cunt. And, unfortunately, that's far too many of us.Quote:
Originally Posted by sycld
i follow nick griffin
with a gun aimed at his lazy eye, which is so lazy i can see it from behind him
also: thanks guys useful stuff for me to consider
That's cute, but many people who graduate with liberal arts BAs will find themselves in that sort of boat. Your standard is not very realistic.Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmosfear
Well, I can't claim to be an expert on museum employment practices, but I took a look on job-search and similar websites and saw a number of listings for museums, historical foundations, etc. that said stuff like "minimum BA in History". I'd say translation of ancient documents is far less realistic, that's work that usually gets given to grad students involved in the project (if not guys with actual doctorates), and it requires the appropriate language skills too.Quote:
Originally Posted by sycld
I was kidding, if he goes military his work will have absolutely nothing to do with ancient history; what I meant was the most relevance he can hope for there is to be deployed to a historically significant place, and then told to do something boring and/or dangerous in that place. As for stretching, I was saying that it's the FS that's a stretch, not the military.Quote:
Originally Posted by sycld
My cousin at least used to be ashamed that her husband "only" makes $100,000 a year. So yeah, some people do have unrealistic perceptions of the world.Quote:
Originally Posted by Syme
Yeah, I didn't mean he could do work in translation without necessarily a higher degree. However, a BA in ancient history should entail some study of at least either ancient Greek or Latin.Quote:
Well, I can't claim to be an expert on museum employment practices, but I took a look on job-search and similar websites and saw a number of listings for museums, historical foundations, etc. that said stuff like "minimum BA in History". I'd say translation of ancient documents is far less realistic, that's work that usually gets given to grad students involved in the project (if not guys with actual doctorates), and it requires the appropriate language skills too.
Historical societies also make sense, though I am a bit surprised that many museums would look for BAs in ancient history, even ones with large collections of Grecco-Roman art, unless they had backgrounds in other fields as well.
Oh, I know you were kidding... and my comment was talking about the FS too, since they care more about modern Iraq and Afghanistan than knowledge of the fact that Inana was Goddess of Heaven and Earth to the Sumerians...Quote:
I was kidding, if he goes military his work will have absolutely nothing to do with ancient history; what I meant was the most relevance he can hope for there is to be deployed to a historically significant place, and then told to do something boring and/or dangerous in that place. As for stretching, I was saying that it's the FS that's a stretch, not the military.
If I had graduated with a liberal arts BA I would have considered myself a failure.Quote:
Originally Posted by Syme
Actually, while we're talking about a lack of perspective, the people I know who either have or are pursuing at least an undergraduate university education outnumber the people I know who don't have one and are not planning on getting one. However, only a little less than a third of Americans have college degrees.
Most of the people whom I know that don't have a college education are mostly family descended from my paternal grandmother's sisters and brothers. Most of the people I meet through either accident or through others I know are educated.
It's not hard to see how people can develop a lack of perspective due to circumstance.
To put it further out of perspective, I never considered a school that wasn't in the top tier (1-60) of US News. And, until I transferred due to weather circumstances (whoo Hurricane Katrina), I also ruled out public schools.
However, I also define my peer groups pretty specifically. Graduates of top tier national universities should represent the upper half of the entry-level salaries, because Christ knows there are a lot more people at Town College & State University bringing down the average.
Yeah okay I see where you are coming fromQuote:
Originally Posted by Atmosfear
EDIT: What an upper-cruster you are
Education is an investment like any other.
so do you only want to associate with people from top tier universities because they're "smarter" than other people, because their BS in business management in one of these more highly regarded universities is automatically going to make them so much better at business, or simply because it reflects their pedigree?
The same reason any group of people associate with eachother: because we are more likely to share common experience, know the same people, and share similar worldviews.
In high school, why did the private schools always hang out with eachother, but never with public school kids? In college, why do greeks always associate amongst themselves? Athletes? In the "real" world, why do military faggots always get hardons for eachother when they get a chance to talk about the units they fought with or how much they hated the sand fleas on parris fucking island? Why do doctors associate with doctors and lawyers associate with lawyers and rich people all send their daughters to deb balls?
What a meaningless if not loaded question.
Saying you "define your peer group" as those people who graduated from top-tier schools is somewhat different from people in a common profession associating with each other. Not that I take offense at who you associate with.
Do you associate exclusively with your peers?
(I don't)
this was more what i was thinking and what motivated my question.Quote:
Originally Posted by Syme
i don't intentionally associate with college-educated people, but more people that i associate with have a college education than the average population because i tend to have more in common with these people. however, there's nothing really all that different between people from tier 1 or tier 2 schools...
The difference is socio-economic. If you are in the upper socio-economic class at a tier 1 school, you've got money and are decently intelligent. If you are in the upper socio-economic class at a tier 2 school, you aren't smart. Any parent in that class would send their kids to get the best education possible--that focus on the value of education is part of the definition of top tier society.
I know you weren't saying you associate exclusively with your peers. I suppose what I should have said was "Not that I take offense at how you define your peer group". I was expressing skepticism towards your explanation of why you define your peer group as those who graduated from certain schools (I don't think that defining your peer group in that way is the same thing as, say, doctors associating with other doctors).
EDIT: I'm not sure I follow you now.
It's exactly the same thing as doctors associated with doctors. At 19, 20, 21 years old, there simply isn't a broad enough base of experience to differentiate people. The major factor amongst all Americans is, "Did you pursue higher education?" Given that I went to a high school that had 100% enrollment in college (save for one kid who is currently driving NASCAR Nextel Cup but that's a different story), and we only associated with the other private schools who had similar enrollment statistics, socialized at the same country clubs, and attended the same society functions, that's was my peer group.
The next life stage began and we went to college. I don't associate much with the people who went to Ivy and near-Ivy schools (ironically, I elected not to), but I do associate with people from similar backgrounds in different cities who attend my school, as well as people from high school who attended different, similar tier institutions. There are certainly a handful of people I would have associated with in high school that I simply don't have anything to say to any longer. I mean, if you went to a glorified community college and commuted from home because you went to rehab, or dropped out of school to tour with your band, our paths have diverged.
I have friends who have graduated and gone on to med school. We stay in touch, but they associate themselves with other med students far more now. During residency, it won't be much different. I have friends that have gotten married and are beginning to have kids. They associate with the friends that are married and having kids. I, however, haven't really begun that dividing phase. For another couple months, anyways, I still divide people by education quality and their parents' socio-economic background.
And the point of the previous post was that it was just another way of removing outliers to move toward the center of people most similar to me. If you were in my peer group in high school and went to a non-national university, then you aren't in my peer group any longer. Because of how well I know my peers, I can also pretty safely assume that you're an idiot.
Whatever; as I said, no skin off my back. When I said I didn't follow you, though, what I meant was this:
"The difference is socio-economic. If you are in the upper socio-economic class at a tier 1 school, you've got money and are decently intelligent. If you are in the upper socio-economic class at a tier 2 school, you aren't smart. Any parent in that class would send their kids to get the best education possible--that focus on the value of education is part of the definition of top tier society."
I'm not saying I disagree with this statement; I don't know whether I disagree or not, because I can't make sense of it. What schools fall within this tier 2, and what is it about them that that guarantees that people in their upper socioeconomic class aren't smart? In fact what you do you mean when you say that someone is in the upper socioeconomic class at a school?
Tier 2 is roughly US News' 60-75th school down to around 120-150. Many of these are state schools (usually with a better reputation for athletics than education) that may have national recognition, but don't have national marketability. There are still brilliant students at these schools (I would say the top 1-5% at most national universities are interchangeable), but the average is lower.
When I said "at a school" I mean "attending a school." I was treating "upper socioeconomic class" as an absolute, based on a students' parents' affluence. Whether you go to community college or MIT, your socioeconomic status doesn't change (until you're independent of your parents, anyways.)
Their academic reputation coupled with the behavior of the upper socioeconomic class. An affluent parent places a premium on education, and given a choice between a top tier or a second tier school, will always put their child in a top tier school. Any child of the upper class who attends one of these schools must not have been able to attend a better school because, by definition of the class itself, he would have gone to that school instead.Quote:
what is it about them that that guarantees that people in their upper socioeconomic class aren't smart?
Again, in general terms. And the numbers are probably fudged based on local variations in perceptions (for example, Auburn is a thoroughly tier 2 school that still attracts a considerably amount of relatively intelligent affluence because of localized perception of the value of its degree--it can get you a competitive job in Atlanta, Birmingham, etc. In that sense, it becomes a rich kid's party school like any other.)
I personally have just finished my BA - majoring in History and minoring in Chinese Language (with a significant background in political and economic studies as well). Let me assure you that I am labouring under no delusions that I will be able to get a decent job based purely on my studies so far. My current plans are to complete my masters and possibly pursue my doctorate at Cambridge. Other alternatives could be the pursuit of employment in the government or foreign service, or even intelligence.
If you are still in your first year (keeping in mind that I really know nothing about how US universities work), consider changing your minor (or, alternatively, double-majoring) to something more marketable like a language.
its a UK uni
I guess I disagree with this assessment, though maybe I don't know enough rich people to say. At least I don't agree that this assessment is compelling enough to support your claim that kids from wealthy families who attend tier 2 schools are dumb.Quote:
Originally Posted by Atmoscheer
Its not wealthy families.
It's top socioeconomic class.
Okay, I don't agree that this assessment is compelling enough to support your claim that kids from the top socioeconomic tier who attend tier 2 schools are dumb. Because that assessment assumes, firstly, that intelligence translates directly into high school academic performance and thus college-applications competitiveness, and secondly, that these parents will deny their children any role in the decision of what school they will attend, and force them to attend whichever of the schools they go into is highest on the US News ranking.
Syme, I think you're over-analyzing something which really doesn't deserve a second thought. Just my opinion.
My old man got his masters in American History while minoring in sociology.
His professions were narrowed down to teacher or tour guide.
Yeah okay you're right. Everyone is entitled to their own view of the socio-academic dynamic. I'll drop it.Quote:
Originally Posted by sycld
That's not true at all, he could have done a wide range of things with those degrees. They just might not have necessarily been directly related to his studies.Quote:
Originally Posted by no_brains_no_worries
the thing is, if i add cultural criticism (Cardiff University is the only University in the UK that does a Cultural criticism course) then i'd be one of only 3 people in the country taking the course. this also puts me in a good position if the subject is to expand. As a bonus Personal Support question, I guess I'm asking what options would a student have in America, or even the rest of Britain, have if they are interested in culture?
journalist?
maybe, but cultural journalists really tend to be nonces who become food or film critics.
OK ive got it, im going to become my lecturers/umberto eco