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A little more background about myself. I was in a grad program (MA in poly sci ) at a large university. After 1 semester I dropped out. I think I was overwhelmed by the difference between undergrad and grad study and the academic politics that went with it. To top it off I didn't think my grad profs were better than my undergrad profs and I was paying a lot for this. Over the years I have learned so much about poly sci on my own.I have read a lot of history(much more than in school) since I was a kid. When I was about 11 or 12 I remember my brother talking a lot about studying the war between Germany and Russia(WW2) in a college history class and I was fascinated by how big the conflict was. I have studied this area a lot since. If money for travel wasn't an issue my dream occupation would be to travel Russia and interview people about what they remember about the war. Off the wall I know!! but I would love to hear from those with history and poly sci degrees who are doing things a little outside the box. More realistically(since I can't speak Russian ha!) I think a lot about writing about politics. With the internet anyone can write about politics and have it seen. So far I haven't had the courage to try.
BTW all the responses have been great. Thank you and please keep them coming.
Not a sinle thing you mentioned has any economic value to it; unless you are wealthy, or have some other means of making a living, you are going to have to find something to do that someone will pay you for doing.
As for the whole reading, interst etc; not uncommon at all. As for the interviews, it has been done, nothing ground breaking in doing that, I mean there is only so many ways a person can state a fact that happened to them.
You want to write about politics, which part, and what do you know about politics? Without any experience and real knowledge, you are basically trying to be one of those pointless 20 something year old commentators on the mass media; lacking knowledge, ramble over taling points, sole purpose is for entertainment, not news. The real political writers have PhD's, experience in at least something, etc.
When you ask "doing things outside the box" what do you mean by that? What do you consider outside the box?
Not a sinle thing you mentioned has any economic value to it; unless you are wealthy, or have some other means of making a living, you are going to have to find something to do that someone will pay you for doing.
As for the whole reading, interst etc; not uncommon at all. As for the interviews, it has been done, nothing ground breaking in doing that, I mean there is only so many ways a person can state a fact that happened to them.
You want to write about politics, which part, and what do you know about politics? Without any experience and real knowledge, you are basically trying to be one of those pointless 20 something year old commentators on the mass media; lacking knowledge, ramble over taling points, sole purpose is for entertainment, not news. The real political writers have PhD's, experience in at least something, etc.
When you ask "doing things outside the box" what do you mean by that? What do you consider outside the box?
Thank you for the reply .I do have relevant working experience and training that I mentioned in the first post of this thread. As of right now I do marketing for a real estate company, but I would like to do something in my spare time that "feeds the soul" you might say. I didn't want to get into my age but I am over 40 and I would like to write about American domestic politics, maybe not for a living but because I have been deeply interested in politics for a long time. My father was county chairman of the local republican party and ran for congress. I have worked on Capitol Hill while I was in college and I have worked on major political campaigns in 5 states ,including a Presidential campaign. As a campaign staff member I had a briefing book on many issues, though largely domestic issues. As for what I mean by "out of the box" I would be interested in hearing the experiences of people with history and poly sci degrees who do things such as write about local history, have political blogs, have worked for or started nonprofits that deal with environmental, political or social issues.
Thank you for the reply .I do have relevant working experience and training that I mentioned in the first post of this thread. As of right now I do marketing for a real estate company, but I would like to do something in my spare time that "feeds the soul" you might say. I didn't want to get into my age but I am over 40 and I would like to write about American domestic politics, maybe not for a living but because I have been deeply interested in politics for a long time. My father was county chairman of the local republican party and ran for congress. I have worked on Capitol Hill while I was in college and I have worked on major political campaigns in 5 states ,including a Presidential campaign. As a campaign staff member I had a briefing book on many issues, though largely domestic issues. As for what I mean by "out of the box" I would be interested in hearing the experiences of people with history and poly sci degrees who do things such as write about local history, have political blogs, have worked for or started nonprofits that deal with environmental, political or social issues.
This info is important, as you probably know, there are many stary eyed 20 something year old college grads who think they are going to get paid for some social idea of theirs that will change the world, all to end up working at Enterprise renting out cars.
This info is important, as you probably know, there are many stary eyed 20 something year old college grads who think they are going to get paid for some social idea of theirs that will change the world, all to end up working at Enterprise renting out cars.
Lol I am sure I was one of those starry eyed 20 year olds. I miss that feeling. Its not as much fun once you realize your limitations. But who knows what might happen even in middle age so I haven't given up. As for being a liberal arts grad it takes time to build up working experience. For awhile I vaguely regretted not finishing grad school but if I had I would have probably never have worked for a brokerage company and received the training in investment. That was the first time in my life when I thought I could move beyond being just another liberal arts grad although I have no regrets in majoring in poly sci.
I basically got sucked into suppy chain management out of college. It wasn't my dream career field, but more or less the field I landed in when I was applying to 100s of jobs after college.
My first job out of college was with a small firm that was contracted with a F500 company. I was an on-site warehouse operations manager for them. We were in charge of their network of warehouses and scheduled routes. It was great experience and I got to travel a lot (which was great for a young single guy).
My second job, where I'm at currently, is more on the procurement side, but I still handle logistics coordination and some accounting aspects. The company is a mid-size IT sales firm. I don't like this job as much as my last, but it pays a lot more and there is more potential to move up.
not a poli sci/history grad here, but had many friends who have:
one is a congressional analyst in DC
one is in web design
one is an air force officer
a couple are HS teachers
one is in sales for Ameriprise Financial (don't call those jobs finance. financial planning is SALES)
one is a fellow business systems analyst
one just finished a masters in public admin
I would like to keep this thread going and maybe create a forum for career ideas for those of us with poly sci/history degrees and also for those with degrees in the other social sciences and the humanities so please keep posting and bring others here.
BA in political science and international relations, minors in Latin American studies and environmental science. Currently work in higher ed marketing/communications - just got a job offer managing all university social media and digital content after doing the same in alumni relations. The writing and statistics skills I gained in social science majors are essential for my current role.
I am pursuing an MS in strategic analytics, and have taken a lot of coursework in web design and basic programming since graduating in 2010. I had planned to join the foreign service (and had passed several rounds of cuts in the Foreign Service Officer's Exam) but a cancer diagnosis 6 months after college graduation took my diplomatic aspirations off the table.
BA in political science and international relations, minors in Latin American studies and environmental science. Currently work in higher ed marketing/communications - just got a job offer managing all university social media and digital content after doing the same in alumni relations. The writing and statistics skills I gained in social science majors are essential for my current role.
I am pursuing an MS in strategic analytics, and have taken a lot of coursework in web design and basic programming since graduating in 2010. I had planned to join the foreign service (and had passed several rounds of cuts in the Foreign Service Officer's Exam) but a cancer diagnosis 6 months after college graduation took my diplomatic aspirations off the table.
Congrats to you from a fellow cancer survivor. I hope you are doing well now. I wish I had your mathematical abilities. It sounds like things are going great for you. Strategic analytics sounds very interesting. Could you elaborate more on it and what your plans are for that degree? What were/are your favorite areas of poly sci? My favorites were American government , comparative politics, development and foreign policy. I have really enjoyed following and studying developments over the last 10 years in political economy. Please post back
again. I would like to create a forum for career ideas for those of us with poly sci/history degrees and also for those with degrees in the other social sciences and the humanities and your career developments are inspirational.
Congrats to you from a fellow cancer survivor. I hope you are doing well now. I wish I had your mathematical abilities. It sounds like things are going great for you. Strategic analytics sounds very interesting. Could you elaborate more on it and what your plans are for that degree? What were/are your favorite areas of poly sci? My favorites were American government , comparative politics, development and foreign policy. I have really enjoyed following and studying developments over the last 10 years in political economy. Please post back
again. I would like to create a forum for career ideas for those of us with poly sci/history degrees and also for those with degrees in the other social sciences and the humanities and your career developments are inspirational.
Thanks! I am doing well, though it was pretty tough on all levels for awhile - I worked full time throughout 6 months of chemo while living 1000 miles away from my family and barely scraping by. It feels good to get this new job where my cancer history does not play into anything at all and a salary that allows me to save. In a few years, I hope to be in a position to make relocation not quite such a bear (I live in one of the most expensive metro areas in the country and even with a 50K salary and no student loans, could not begin to afford even the dumpiest of 1 bedroom apartments).
I actually do not consider myself strong at math... or at least, strong in the traditional sense. I was always encouraged to focus on languages (both English and foreign) and social studies with the hopes of going into law, so my math skills atrophied. On the other hand, I understand math when directly related to projects: i.e. statistical analysis. Math is the one subject where I'm a visual learner, so I supplement everything I do with graphs. Luckily, that's how most people best interpret the data so the more I can learn about visualisation, the better. I learned through experience that math is a lot less difficult of a beast for me than programming, so rather than focus on the computer science side of digital communications, I went the analytics route.
The MS in strategic analytics is brand new program focusing on big data, especially with regards to digital marketing and social media, though people in the program come from all backgrounds. The program can take a few different paths depending on your background - for instance, I have no technical background in database management so I am not going to take the programming-heavy track given existing expectations. Instead, I'm focusing on the marketing side where we take raw data and make it useful for supervisors, clients, and other stakeholders while also learning how to glean business decisions ourselves out of the data. It's a great program for someone like me who is fairly early in my career and looking for a way to seperate myself from the pack. It helps that it's free for me due to tuition remission - I might not be so excited to join a first cohort without seeing end results if I was paying myself! It's giving me some time to think about getting an MBA, but not jump into it immediately.
My interests in politics have always been on the international scene. I double majored and double minored by accident - in taking as many international politics courses as I could, I accidentally ended up with the politics major and environmental science minors. I found that I only had to take a handful of extra classes to achieve each. My dream is to go back into international development or corporate social responsibility from the communications angle. I'd also be happy risking through the ranks of higher ed or going into hospital communications or fundraising, particularly for cancer centers.
I haven't lost sight of changing the world, but realize the best way I can do that is by staying on the technical/behind the scenes side of things. For every program officer out in the field, there are a ton of people behind the scenes raising money, courting donors, writing compelling content to attract legal and social attention, and people maintaining the websites and technical systems. Those people might not become the head honcho, but can have a strong career while still doing good for the world.
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