Survivor Tale

I’ve written previously about why people with starry-eyed dreams of becoming a professor should not go to graduate school (here and here). But let’s say you’ve drunk the higher academic Kool-Aid, and believe that you must get at least a master’s degree in a nifty liberal arts or social science discipline if you are ever going to achieve your dream of becoming an employed, tax-paying citizen. Northwest History, a blog run by Eastern Washington University history professor Larry Cebula, has an excellent piece on the subject by Lee Nilsson. Nilsson got a master’s degree in history and is now employed as an analyst at the U.S. Department of State. In his article, he lays out some of what graduate students in the humanities must do to prepare themselves for a career that relates to their fields of study. The same advice is applicable to undergraduates.