Historian

The job of a Historian is to study the past. They look at events, people, groups or ideas, from times before doing research for the purpose of learning from the past.

As anyone who has sat through a high school history class knows there’s a lot to learn when it comes to the field of history. For your job you pick a part of history you really like – be it a certain time, place or country – then work to learn as much as you can about that subject.

Your goal is to be an expert. To do this you use things like research from Historians before you, first hand accounts of a person who lived through the time or event and old newspapers, records or photographs. Be aware learning isn’t just something you’ll do in school; Historians spend their entire careers making sure they’re on top of new findings in their subject and writing papers about the research they do. Most Historians publish quite a bit of their research, writing things like journal articles or even books.

After you finish your last year of schooling you’ll probably turn right around and start looking for a job at the college or university you just graduated from. This is because jobs are primarily in universities or schools where you’ll work as a Teacher. That being said there are some jobs available for you in historical societies, museums and government agencies. For example each branch of the armed forces has a Historian on their staff.