I am in the last year of the combined BA/MA general history program here at AU, and I started in the Fall of 2019. I am from York, Maine, a small beach town in the extreme south-eastern part of the state that attracts plenty of tourists in the summer. I plan to start law school in the fall, still waiting to hear back from all the schools I applied to.
I chose to take the route of an extra year at AU to get the MA instead of straight to law school for a few reasons. One was it meant an extra year in the city with my friends that I lost during covid. Another is that is allowed me to really master the history skills I thought I did not get to fully develop due to the tumultuous years I have been in DC. The most important reason was that I thought that investing my time and effort into achieving a Master’s Degree in history would set me apart from your typical law school applicant, your typical law student, and of course, your typical lawyer. I can’t say for certain what kind of law I will practice, but I am happy to bet that the skills and experience I gain from the MA program will make me a lawyer out of the ordinary.
For this class, I am most excited, and nervous, to push myself into an area or skill base that I simply have no capability in. I am impressed by the work that is done in the area of digital history, and by public history in general, but it has just not been where I have spent time studying or exploring. I hope that this course will give me a new perspective on digital history, in addition to some useful skills in that field should the need ever arise in my career.