I’m a college senior in my last semester. I’ll be graduating (hopefully) with a BA in history. I originally wanted to major in psychology but was pressured by my parents my freshman year to major in history because it was what I was good at in high school. Once I reached those upper level history courses I started making Cs and Ds which severely dropped my gpa. I did fine in core classes but did badly in my major classes. As a result I’m stuck with a 2.3 gpa. I want to go to grad school and get a masters in something I would excel in but I think I may be blackballed from grad schools because of my gpa. I could go to law school but I would have to ace the LSAT to even have a chance. Besides that I can’t really think of anything I can do with my degree except teaching. Am I completely hopeless?
History major here. I’ve been working in marketing for the last 20+ years. You likely have strong research, writing and critical thinking skills which are transferable to multiple careers. You can probably ask your career services office for an outcomes report by major. You’ll see plenty of history majors not working as teachers.
Go to your career center. Find internships, job, alumni connections. Get in touch with people. Your major shows your critical thinking skills. You don’t have to teach history unless you want to. Go to grad school and work your bottom off once there. You have plenty of options.
Yes, get to the career center, pronto. You shouldn’t be assuming the only thing history majors do is teach (which is just not informed.) Not sure how you decided that.
Rather than think you need grad school to define your interests…well, it doesn’t work that way. Grad school is about interests already defined, initially, at least. And the record to go with those interests.
Being blackballed refers to unfair blocking. Your challenge is the college record. A few years working and your opportunities may expand.
First of all, what’s wrong with teaching? It’s a great job, with more job satisfaction that most. There is also a severe dearth of good K-12 history teachers who actually love history.
Aside from that, you can apply for any job which requires a humanities or social science BA, meaning most non-lab jobs. You just have to figure out what you want to do, which seems half of the problem, while the second half seems to be that you’re not sure what you can do. So, as @lookingforward wrote, get thee to thy career center, posthaste.
After you’ve been working for a few years, you can revisit the idea of grad school. You may have a difficult time getting into grad school now, since you did not do well on advanced courses, which may make them feel that you cannot deal with the coursework required for an advanced degree. However, after a few you in the “real world”, your work experience may compensate for that.
The issue with going to grad school, even if you had a better GPA, is that you really don’t know what you want to do. Graduate school is a pretty expensive place to explore your interests. So find something you like doing, do it for a few years, and then decide whether you need or want to go to grad school.
History major related jobs include teaching, but also less common other jobs like in museums, other historical sites or events, or archaeology.
But it is likely that many history graduates go into the general BA/BS non-major-specific job market. This is large, but has a large number of others competing in it (there is also overlap with general business and competition from business majors).
Agree with others on going to the career center.
First things first, if you choose to have kids in the future, let that be a lesson to not shove an idea of what to do with their life down their throat. Second thing, maybe put more critical thought into everything your parents suggest from now on.
You’ve effectively run your GPA into the ground, which was basically the whole point of your degree was that you’d come out of it with a high GPA because you were good at it. This would get you past more gatekeepers from employers to grad school admissions officers.
You most certainly would have a hard time getting into a university because of your GPA.
Here’s what I’d do if I were in your situation. Leave your GPA off your resume.
I’d apply to as many jobs as possible and interview for as many jobs as possible.
At this point, you’re likely going to make less than 40K.
You can try and find an entry product manager job and work your way up from there.
Or you can start in a customer service job and work your way up from there.
Or you can learn how to code and go from there.
Or you can join the military and go from there.
Or you can get one of those implementation jobs where you train people on a product, get to travel , and make decent money (but there is a high burnout rate).
The point is, you need to get into a stable job and then while you have that stable job and can afford to put a roof over your head (live in an apartment or at your parents for a while), you figure out what it truly is that you want to do and have some kind of financial plan for yourself. You look at careers. You e-mail people who work in the field. If interested, you figure out what it is going to take you to get into that field and if it will be worth it whether financially or otherwise for you. Then you make your move. You get some savings going and move onto a different, better paying job.
Do not get trapped in a job that sucks. I tried to lift a lot of people up at my old one and one just never got out. He’s still working in customer support fielding tickets on a sub-40K salary when he started a year before I did and I probably make close to triple what he does now after I was able to dig myself out of that hole we were both in. You will find it very hard to recover financially if you aren’t self-aware.
Can you delay graduation by a semester and choose your last 5 classes strategically to improve your professional outcomes. Include organizational psychology and intro to Statistics if you can +3 classes you’re pretty sure you can ace. Get a tutor and work with them right from the start. Anything to move the needle a bit.
(You’ll still have a sub -3.0 GPA but you’ll be able to list courses under “relevant coursework” and list the grade next to it.) If you did poorly in your research course, retake it or take a slightly modified version so you can list itbon your resume as an Attachment (or a B+).
In the meantime, become assiduous at the career center. Do all workshops and look for anything that requires a general BA.
Graduating in December and starting in January means there’ll be fewer graduates competing for jobs than if you start looking now.
Find a job in your college town, assuring them you can work in the fall too (fewer jobs if you can only work 10 weeks). See if you can take one extra class (especially if Organizational psychology has a 100-level pre-req you don’t have). Start building your resume.
Does a store near you need a CM? What about customer service?
Also, go to the health center and make an appointment with a counselor. Talking about this all may well help you process whatever went wrong.
What went wrong with the upper level classes? Lack of work? Poor synthesis skills? Memorization? Research skills? Writing skills?
no you are not hopeless.history is one kind of important subject.so you try to your best you must win.