As of today, I have officially accepted the offer of a graduate assistantship in the History Master's program at Clemson University. This is, obviously, a big step for me. Part of the reason I chose the school was the opportunity they are giving me to be a graduate assistant and although their department's strengths aren't quite where I imagine my focus will eventually lie, their diversity as a program as well as the fact that, as a school with only an MA program, I'll be able to work more closely with professors who have an excellent record of getting students into good PhD granting programs, helped me make my decision. And, of course, with these tough economic times, it doesn't hurt that their financial package was the most generous of the five schools to which I was accepted. It really was a tough decision, and I was rather meticulous about it. I was also accepted to Western Michigan University and St. Louis University, both of which have extremely well-renowned medieval history programs, and although neither offered me a financial package, it took a lot of gumption to turn them down. I don't think I'm rationalizing, trying to make it all about the money, because I do honestly like the fact that at Clemson I still have several options of study. Medieval Studies is certainly where my heart lies, but I'm also interested in Late Antiquity and the Early Modern era as well as the history and philosophy of science, and the fact that I'm basically being given two more years to really hone the craft and pin down a more focused area of study is nice. I'm aware of the fact that graduate studies entails an intensive focus, especially for the dissertation, but I really hope that I can avoid was historian Norman Davies lamented about scholars knowing "more and more about less and less." Essentially, I am hoping to avoid this:
Plus, a graduate assistantship will, presumably, look pretty good on a PhD application. And the PhD is where a greater "fit" in university will mean even more - so a more medieval focus may lead me to a place like Fordham or Toronto whereas a history and philosophy of science focus could take me some place like Pittsburgh, Wisconsin, or one of the University of California schools.
When I sit back and take stock, I sometimes can't believe that I am where I am. I don't mean that I don't believe in myself or that I think I'm being given more than I'm due. It's just that over the course of my lifetime, I have been enamored by various areas of study and sometimes I feel like it was simply happenstance that I got into history in sort of the right place at the right time, so to speak. Briefly, here is my intellectual background from birth to now:
As a young child I was always known as "the science kid" by my parents and relatives because of my interests in dinosaurs and astronomy. I was interested in other things that nerdy kids were into as well: animals (especially sea creatures and insects), the space program, cool things like volcanoes and earthquakes. For a very long time I assumed I was going to go to college and become a paleontologist or astronomer or biologist or chemist (though, interestingly, I never particularly wanted to be an astronaut). This continued well into middle school and the first couple of years of high school, though my interests certainly broadened. I always loved maps as a kid and was always fairly good at geography. I developed into a pretty great reader and really got into science fiction when I was 11 or 12. And I started playing drums, was pretty good at that too, and had even more on my plate because of it. Still, science was always the focus. Even as late as sophomore year of high school, when I went to a college visit at IU, Bloomington, I enrolled in the "physical sciences" focus and got tours of the Chemistry building and went to several lectures given by astrophysicists and cosmologists. But, in the reality of high school, I ran into one major problem: math. I was great at math as a kid, but somewhere around junior year, the limits of my abilities seemed to catch up with me, and I slowly and painfully realized that I probably wasn't really cut out for the rigors of a scientific career. So where did that leave me. I was still playing drums, and my parents, and especially my guitar-playing former rock-band member father, were beginning to coax me towards a career in music. As much as I loved playing, I knew even as an adolescent that that was not the life for me (how many kids have that experience? parents want you to be a musician, but you don't?). I began to fall into writing. I'd been writing since I was little kid, stories, plays, poems, lots of science fiction (mirroring my interest in the literature), and it began to seem a natural extension of my interests: science led to science fiction, reading science fiction led to writing science fiction, writing leads to. . . journalism! I started as a journalism major in college and almost immediately regretted it. One problem I found as I took journalism courses in college was that I felt like I was being taught in a "how-to" manner without having the requisite knowledge to make anything out of that. Plus, when you learn to write newspaper articles, you're taught to dumb your writing down to sixth grade level, and it was just awful to write that way. Several friends, and even an advisor or two, suggested that I switch to English since it offered a similar degree (many newspapermen came out of English programs) and I would be able to read (which I loved), write more than simplified prose, and gain a more knowledge based education as opposed to a "how-to" one. Yet, even in English, I felt I was missing something, and I discovered that I enjoyed the historical context of the literature more than I enjoyed the literature itself, especially medieval and early modern literature. One of the reasons history seemed to make the most sense for me, once I was a few years into college, is because it seemed to be the most all-encompassing of any of the courses of study I took. History is, obviously such a broad topic, and my focus eventually centered, as I mentioned before (and if you've ever read anything on this blog you probably already know) on the Middle Ages and the history of science. For those of you keeping score, that goes: science --> science fiction reading --> science fiction writing --> writing in general --> journalism writing --> English literature --> History --> science.
And we've come full circle. . . and it really does feel kind of like I'm a kid again.
Plus, a graduate assistantship will, presumably, look pretty good on a PhD application. And the PhD is where a greater "fit" in university will mean even more - so a more medieval focus may lead me to a place like Fordham or Toronto whereas a history and philosophy of science focus could take me some place like Pittsburgh, Wisconsin, or one of the University of California schools.
When I sit back and take stock, I sometimes can't believe that I am where I am. I don't mean that I don't believe in myself or that I think I'm being given more than I'm due. It's just that over the course of my lifetime, I have been enamored by various areas of study and sometimes I feel like it was simply happenstance that I got into history in sort of the right place at the right time, so to speak. Briefly, here is my intellectual background from birth to now:
As a young child I was always known as "the science kid" by my parents and relatives because of my interests in dinosaurs and astronomy. I was interested in other things that nerdy kids were into as well: animals (especially sea creatures and insects), the space program, cool things like volcanoes and earthquakes. For a very long time I assumed I was going to go to college and become a paleontologist or astronomer or biologist or chemist (though, interestingly, I never particularly wanted to be an astronaut). This continued well into middle school and the first couple of years of high school, though my interests certainly broadened. I always loved maps as a kid and was always fairly good at geography. I developed into a pretty great reader and really got into science fiction when I was 11 or 12. And I started playing drums, was pretty good at that too, and had even more on my plate because of it. Still, science was always the focus. Even as late as sophomore year of high school, when I went to a college visit at IU, Bloomington, I enrolled in the "physical sciences" focus and got tours of the Chemistry building and went to several lectures given by astrophysicists and cosmologists. But, in the reality of high school, I ran into one major problem: math. I was great at math as a kid, but somewhere around junior year, the limits of my abilities seemed to catch up with me, and I slowly and painfully realized that I probably wasn't really cut out for the rigors of a scientific career. So where did that leave me. I was still playing drums, and my parents, and especially my guitar-playing former rock-band member father, were beginning to coax me towards a career in music. As much as I loved playing, I knew even as an adolescent that that was not the life for me (how many kids have that experience? parents want you to be a musician, but you don't?). I began to fall into writing. I'd been writing since I was little kid, stories, plays, poems, lots of science fiction (mirroring my interest in the literature), and it began to seem a natural extension of my interests: science led to science fiction, reading science fiction led to writing science fiction, writing leads to. . . journalism! I started as a journalism major in college and almost immediately regretted it. One problem I found as I took journalism courses in college was that I felt like I was being taught in a "how-to" manner without having the requisite knowledge to make anything out of that. Plus, when you learn to write newspaper articles, you're taught to dumb your writing down to sixth grade level, and it was just awful to write that way. Several friends, and even an advisor or two, suggested that I switch to English since it offered a similar degree (many newspapermen came out of English programs) and I would be able to read (which I loved), write more than simplified prose, and gain a more knowledge based education as opposed to a "how-to" one. Yet, even in English, I felt I was missing something, and I discovered that I enjoyed the historical context of the literature more than I enjoyed the literature itself, especially medieval and early modern literature. One of the reasons history seemed to make the most sense for me, once I was a few years into college, is because it seemed to be the most all-encompassing of any of the courses of study I took. History is, obviously such a broad topic, and my focus eventually centered, as I mentioned before (and if you've ever read anything on this blog you probably already know) on the Middle Ages and the history of science. For those of you keeping score, that goes: science --> science fiction reading --> science fiction writing --> writing in general --> journalism writing --> English literature --> History --> science.
And we've come full circle. . . and it really does feel kind of like I'm a kid again.
As angry as it makes me that you're going to a stupid ACC school...Congratulations~!
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how similar our histories are. I think I read more books last year than I had read total before college, yet I aspire to be a professional writer. I was at a family gathering recently and told that they always thought I would "invent something". And finally, my parents STILL want me to be a musician even though I haven't been in a band for years or played out solo in over 3 years. So, yeah.
ReplyDelete