Just started to study history at uni Veeky Forums...

If you don't want to be a teacher, run.

>studying just to find a job and not to educate yourself
Why has captalism to reach into education?

is it that bad? are you stuck in a predetermined path like this if you study history? all roads lead to teacher jobs.

You're screwing yourself. Every uni history is primarily about

1. How Group A pushed out poor Group B and
2. The awful conditions women in Group B (and maybe A too) had to live in.

Repeat from ancient times to present day.

git better professors fgt

You do study that. Roman history was a mandatory course, Hitler was in mandatory contemporary history, vikings were in mandatory medieval history. Optional course included samurai and more in depth hitler and vikings.

But yeah, history at college level ain't storytelling like high school, it's economic history, historical geography, cultural geography, ethnology, paleography, etc.
Still, I love it. I just dislike archival sciences & bibliotecography because mandatory archive work plus dust allergy equals pained sinuses.

working in an archive sounds pretty comfy tbqh

do you have any tips on how to survive the first year?

Honestly I don't know what to tell you, because I actually enjoyed the stuff you seem to dislike. If you don't like studying the less glamorous parts of history, you might as well change major because 95% of your professors will be specialized in that shit and use their specialties to make case studies about whatever they're trying to teach you.
Example: my historical geography prof specializes in colonial Africa, especially the Sahel, and during class we went through a very deep examination of the concepts of border and nationality, the hows and whys the meaning of those concepts shifted through the period, and the changes they meant for those societies. Now, he wasn't teaching a masterclass on sahel history, he was teaching us concepts and theories of political history, using his area of expertise to make meaningful examples.
So even when you don't particularly care about a certain part of history, try to look beyond the notionism to the themes and patterns your professor is trying to point out to you. It will be much more interesting.

If you didn't come into Uni with credits, your probably taking lower level and introductory courses, which are pretty boring in ALL majors. I'm not a history major but my favorite classes were a few upper division classes I took called "Romanticism and Realism" + "Renaissance and Reformation"because I had a lot of free credit hours since I came in with a good amount of AP credit. At the very least, if you want to be a history major than stick it out until after you take a few higher division classes, and if you don't like them than consider switching.

>just started
No shit it's boring you're in mandatory survey courses. Suck it up pussy. You won't get anything remotely interesting until you actually get into higher level department courses.

normally i enjoy very niche stuff, heck i read a book about the wine trade of medieval europe from the 11th to 15th century once, but when it comes to uni? for some reason it just loses its charm and fire.

>I just dislike archival sciences & bibliotecography
Then you won't become a (good) historian. Archives are the best.

>Then you won't become a (good) historian.
Yeah, I know. I don't have much of a taste for research, I'd much rather go teach and read up on all the delightful discoveries made by others.

well yeah, that's just how it goes. You can't be passionate about everything you read, especially when you don't choose the reading. Not to mention the time pressure to complete assignments

Well get over it. In college you have to get through lots of material you don't particularly care about to reach the parts you do like. The trick is just mastering the skills you need to succeed in your chosen major. Focus on doing that if the material isn't interesting you, use it as an opportunity to sharpen your academic skill set in research and paper writing. If nothing else you'll be a fine tuned essay writing machine by the time you finally reach the courses you're interested in and can fully enjoy the material without having to worry about keeping up with the work load, since it'll be old hat to you by then.

>niche stuff
This is not how it works tho. You need to know the basics first. Then you can read and research on niche stuff.
> it just loses its charm and fire
Suck it up. If you don't enjoy primary research you are fucked but I literally hated my last years of my M.A. When I wrote my thesis though I could finally stop doing shitt courses with militaryfags and haploit autists and go to the archive instead.

Also pro tip: You need to develope different kinds of reading techniques to save time. Write excerpts on the stuff that is important to you. Know what you want to know before reading a text and maybe even write it down. If you HAVE to read a certain text from uni just skim it if you know what the dude is talking about already. Get mates do work collectively on texts, talk about them. If you don't have friends find a way to talk about the text with yourself. Use citavi/zotero and build a database.

that is very true and a good point.

Fair enough. It's a tought titty though. In Germany (where I studied) you basically train people to become researchers but you don't need to work in the archives for years with some profs. It's retarded cause this is the actual research and some people collapse when they have to hit the archive for the first time.

thanks for the tip user, trying to work on reading rechniques because of all the material, i will try this.

Ya'll seem like actual college educated historians, why the fuck are you on this board? How can you stand it?

I am even working on my PhD. I started coming to Veeky Forums in like 2004 and it's not that I can leave. Also some of the memes are mildly funny and here and there you have people that seem not entirely retarded like ITT.

>but you don't need to work in the archives for years with some profs
Same here actually, which is why I don't actually have any problems. I can easily handle the amount of research I need to do at this level (my airways a bit less, but eh antihistamines exist), I kinda doubt I could at phd level. On the other hand, I've been tutoring people since high school and I quite like that. I'm willing to challenge myself with a classroom setting.

I've been on Veeky Forums for well over a decade, but sometimes I find Veeky Forums unbearable, there's so much propaganda and misinfo I don't even bother responding to most threads anymore cause it's like trying to argue on /b/ circa 2006.

>I've been tutoring people
Yeah, I did that in college. I really hate teaching (because of mild autism I guess) but my students loved me. I seriously need to do that again but it's actually hard to get such a position. I mean it's first world problems because right now I am getting paid for research. It's amazing.

I always laugh at people taking Tacitus or some other Roman literally. It's like the way people wrote history in 1800. 95% of people here lack basic source criticism.

My edgy friend showed me this site in middle school. It's been downhill ever since

good thing we can be picky with our hundreds of ancient source right?

What's the point of educating yourself when you don't find it interesting or when you can't make money of it?

No, we can't but we can establish context and identify tropes. If we take them for face value we are not doing history but just repeating what they wrote down. This was literally Mommsens argument in the 1850s...And Mommsen won that argument.