21 years old upper-midle class white male here

21 years old upper-midle class white male here.

Is it worth to get a history degree or should I just do le 'Good Will Hunting' ?

Already have a job its just for the lulz.

Simply read books as he said. If you need supplemental help watch lectures online. You can also move to a place near a good University and sneak into lectures occasionally. You can even go to professors offices and ask them questions during their office hours. Most won't mind. The only subjects where you need a degree are hard sciences where you sometimes need laboratory experience and languages, though with these you can get a lot of the experience of conversation by simply listening to foreign language radio.

This is me again. If you want to become an expert eventually you will probably have to go to graduate school because the only way to get the experience and mentor ship required to become an expert is being around other experts. Even this can be alleviated somewhat by simply subscribing to journals though.

B-but what about le gender studies degree isnt it worth ? xDddxDxDxDDDDDD

Don't get a history degree. It'll just put you into debt. Get a marketable degree or do a trade.

I really know nothing about what the sphere of history is like, but I know of many hobbyist programmers and mathematicians. Surely a person could do the same for history.

> Keep up to date with what people are publishing on blogs and journals
> email historians/authors/professors with thought out inquiries (I.e. not shitposts).
> start a website. It costs 200 bucks for 2 years. (Make it static HTML if you have to, it's not hard)

>I will have a degree and you will be serving my kids fries
>M-MUH DIK DO YE WANNA FITE EETSIDE?!
topkek

what if i wanna teach?

If you want to teach or go to law school history is good afaik. Otherwise, I wouldn't go for it unless I already had a career.

Honestly It's a lot harder to teach yourself things.
Sure you can read and read and read but you never really think that critically about certain things. Schooling not only provides and education and a direction to take, but it also engages you in arguments, and allows you to take time and think very deep about certain topics of history.

This is just what I have found. I have been educating myself for years, thinking I was going into University with a chip on my shoulder and that I was the one who was going to be doing the teaching, yet everyday I learn something new and hear new arguments. Whether the arguments are false or true all depends on how much I know and how much more I am willing to research.

Yes though I am very interested in History i can loose track of what I want to learn when I educate myself, however when I am in School, I am constantly finding myself learning new things even when I least expect it.

>Sure you can read and read and read but you never really think that critically about certain things
Lectures can be great to make you think about the subject critically, that's true. But from my own experience I've found I'm reading way more after university than I used to when I was going. Might have been a shit student tho.

Looking back on it, almost seems like lecturers break it down so easily into disgestible portions that it's easily to forego your natural inquisitiveness because everything is so streamlined and made convenient for you. Just read the recommended material and proceed to get your good grade.

you must not have had very good Professors or at least dull lessons.

as for reading on your own, That is the point of University and Higher Education actually. "Higher Education is the great and ordinary means to a great and ordinary end." -John Henry Newman. Basically University is the jump off point, you have to start there and when you understand what you want to pursue you take what youve learned and go on to learn more in your own way.

>but I know of many hobbyist programmers and mathematicians.
>Surely a person could do the same for history.

Yes which is why we have people who fall for Marxist or Rightist history memes and casually just accept memes such as "muh primacy of nation" or "muh marxist historical model."

>Yes which is why we have people who fall for Marxist or Rightist history memes and casually just accept memes such as "muh primacy of nation" or "muh marxist historical model."
History major here.

Those tend to be people from academia themselves. Funnily enough, less in history and more in Political Science and Anthropology (Seriously, Athropology is filled with fucking leftists for some reason.)

Hobby historians are the kind who would post pics like this and go "yo checkout dis badass armor," or something.

Take a history degree of your preferred area, but then go and research areas that aren't done much of, but also where fieldwork can easily be done. Looking at Celtic tribes in Britain could be a thing especially if you mention boudicca at least twice, or go to France and look at the cathars
Where are you currently user, also practice speaking so you'll be good for university
The main reason why you go to Harvard is for the name drop on the CV, not because it's the top rated university

historian here.

you don't study history to learn history. you study history to produce history.

history is the systematic organization of the collective memory.

...

getting a good education at uni is incidental.

the primary reason to go to uni is to make networking connections and capitalize on that networking at a future date. and that's for both profs and students.

this
anybody who is a neet and can't communicate with people are wasting their time by going to college.

Didn't read your post but that's some top armour

historians write "official" versions of history, that's what he's saying

fucking kill me now

>Can't earn degree, get a guaranteed teaching job, and then teach a bunch of dumbass kids basic history.

It's just IRL shitposting, and getting paid.

But he's fucking correct.

Every time some cunt does a thesis in History, your professor will always ask "has this topic/pov/source material analysis been covered before, ja oder nein?"