On becoming an historian…
Wow, what a journey it has been! As an undergraduate student at UC Irvine, I had a TON of ideas about what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be. None of them was historian. Instead, as an international studies major with just as many classes in Russian studies, I had a strong focus on current events, solving the world's problems, and making a difference. However, after graduation, I didn't have a lot of options, or the confidence to push myself to find that power. So, I took a more "normal" trajectory.
I worked in retail right out of college, managing a shoe store. I then moved on to work as a project manager and a technical recruiter. At that point, I landed an incredible job at McMaster-Carr, my current employer. In the time that I've worked there, it has been my rock. It gave me financial and personal independence, reinstilled in me the confidence I needed to dream bigger, and was a stable and supportive environment when I most needed it. In those 8 years, I've been able to explore what kind of schooling I wanted to pursue...
business?
sustainability?
literature?
In the end, after testing out a few graduate classes at Harvard through their extension program, I landed on a combination of multiple things, a Master of Liberal Arts. I began taking classes at Johns Hopkins, and in three and a half years, I graduated. In the 10 years between my senior year of college and completing my master's degree, I grew up. I found that I do want to make a difference, but maybe in a different way than before. I am blessed by my interdisciplinary background with a solid foundation upon which I was able to craft my own worldview, find my voice, and shape my future.
With all of that in mind, I took to writing my thesis on Anne of Green Gables and the way the text portrays the role of women at the time. History and literature are so interconnected. Literature can be a mirror of history, a critical lens, or a memorialized hope. I titled my thesis "Greener Gables: Anne Shirley's Feminine Utopia and Women's History in Victorian Canada" because Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author, portrayed women in a way that diverged from the historical understanding of women's roles in society and levels of autonomy at the time. A lot of the events that took place in the novel were completely possible at the time, but they certainly were not probable. In this sense, the book is special. It serves all three of the functions I listed above. It mirrored history, critiqued certain societal norms by having the heroine defy the odds, and memorialized a hope that all girls, or at least more girls, could follow in Anne's footsteps.
All of that led me to history. Despite my love for literature, the history was really the core of my work. The text was just a conduit, a framework, and a perspective. What can we learn from history itself? What can we learn from continuity and change? What can we learn from contemporary interpretations and reactions to the happenings of a particular timeframe? All of this made me excited to pursue a Ph.D. in history. And I feel that by helping people understand history and consider what it means to participate in tomorrow's history, I would be able to make that difference I always wanted to make.