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.