William Ward
HIS 3600
Professionalizing History Majors
Spring 2025
Philosophy Statement
I have simple advice and guiding principles that I follow that will enhance your academic career: just care. It sounds so simple and absurd, simply caring about whatever you are doing or interested in goes a long way. Care to understand the subject that interests you or simply care to invest yourself in it. Caring goes a long way to make you engaged in the academic world.
It may seem strange for a stranger to ask you to care about what you are doing as a historian, but it can really apply to any job field, not just academics. I didn’t care about my previous fields of I.T. and mechanical engineering; they were fun for me, but I didn’t care about nor think about them as a path for me post school. I didn’t even care about history either as a bit of an ignorant kid in school who didn’t really care and was just coasting through school. I didn’t think about my future, and I especially didn’t think about the past in a positive or understanding way. It wasn’t till a history teacher really challenged me and put things into perspective. I was a fool that countered people who said Black lives matter with all lives matter because I didn’t know or didn’t care to know the reality and struggle for Black people in our country. It was through getting challenged and made to care about perspective that it really came to me, the true meaning of history and the world around me. Care in history made me empathize with those who suffered; care made me understand the perspective of those around me, what they were going through. Caring truly makes you a better person, a real motivator for positive power for growth as a person.
Caring isn’t just about understanding; caring is putting in the effort. In the academic field more than ever, we are seeing a growth of people not caring about engaging themselves. Far too often I hear and see people simply searching for answers in academia, looking for answer keys instead of trying to learn. More than at any anytime in history, with new inventions in the A.I. field, we have people who do not care about doing assignments. People using their favorite AI software to write their assignments for them has tainted the academic field. Without care, they have developed unhealthy skills and ways to solve problems. Without care, they have made academia worse for all others because we have programs checking every written work for AI, causing those unfortunates to be caught under false positives. As I write this, it feels engaging; I feel proud of the work I do, and more than that, I feel happy. You must care that assignments for academia aren’t just things to check off; they’re a way of helping train your brain. Assignments like this help you do self-introspection and truly help you develop skills and a mindset that aid you with your entire life. Just care about putting in the effort; I promise it will feel good to make something with your own mind and thoughts; it’s worth it.
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Caring can really make a difference for you in academia and especially in the historical field. It can make you truly understand what you are seeing throughout history. It can help you develop positively as a person, which all should strive for. Finally, it can help you engage yourself in a meaningful way. So there really is only one thing to do: just care. Caring has led me to my future path into the field that interests me: the archivist field. Where is caring going to lead you?