Why Study History?

Stanford University History Building

I was very surprised and delighted to open Hacker News today and see this in the top stories:

Why Study History - American Historical Association

As someone who spent over $200k (or at least had as many money paid on my behalf) on a history diploma I figured I had better know the answer to this question. I found the article to be pretty simplistic and a little gushy after the first read, but after some reflection I’ve realized exactly how precious my education is history is in my daily life.

Everyone knows that there are only two legitimate applications for a history major: teaching and law school. I was still under the naive impression that being a lawyer was like living an episode of Law and Order or Suits until I realized that: (a) I’ll never be Jack McCoy (b) the paralegals are nowhere near as hot as they are on Suits. Seriously, the principle donor for a special scholarship that I received from Stanford and former university general counsel Mike Roster authored several articles and spoke at numerous conferences about an impending bubble in law (particularly in the salaries of first years). I saw what was happening in the financial sector and decided to read the writing on the wall and so, in my sophomore year decided to abandon the career choice that I had been preparing for.

Wanna be a lawyer? Full disclosure, paralegals don’t look like this

I still had plenty of time to change my major to any of a number of degrees that would improve my job prospects, and I considered them all. Truth be told, I’m not naturally a good fit for the degree: I’m dyslexic and read very slowly, I’m very opinionated and creative (creativity is not a quality most historians would consider a merit), and I will sometimes just fudge details if it makes the story I’m telling better. But my time in the department had allowed me to interact with some of the most brilliant historical minds in the world: Jack Rakove, David Kennedy, Richard White, my adviser Jessica Riskin, etc.. This advantage on top of the fact that I had fallen in love with the history corner (especially sneaking their late at night to smoke and watch movies on the projectors) was important at the time, but I didn’t realize the true benefits until much later.

Attending college in Silicon Valley, it was only a matter of time before I was swept up in the tidal wave of entrepreneurial spirit and decided that I would be taking my talents to North Beach (actually Hayes Valley but that just sounded too cool not to say) and start my own company focused on developing a new age music player for Android and iOS. Excuse me? Go back to that part where you were a history major and decided to start a tech company… WTF? That’s the reaction that I have been getting for years now. What most people can’t seem to understand is how my history degree has benefited me in my career as a designer and front-end engineer. A lot of these points are touched on in the article that prompted this post and I won’t beat a dead horse, but I will try and summarize:

1. Handling Evidence

One of the most important qualities of a historian is the ability to discern the reliability and objectiveness of the sources that we handle. Unlike mathematicians or engineers, historians evidence is collected through very subjective (non-scientific) methods, and separating the objective “truths” from their human context is the most arduous task. For this reason we, historians, are the ones who read all of the footnotes at the end of the book, or read conflicting accounts of what is presented to better determine the objectivity of the source.

2. A fresh take on old ideas

One of the first lessons that I learned as a history major was that if you think you have something interesting to say, it has already been said a thousand times. How then are you supposed to make novel and insightful contributions in a field when bright minds have been at work for centuries? This is the challenge that excited me the most about History as a subject. For this reason, I am immensely proud of the papers that I wrote.

3. Everything is obvious

Finally, a historical perspective allows you to take a wide angle view of problems and challenges when you approach them. When I am under a lot of pressure to get something huge done and feel that I don’t have the resources or skills to execute it puts me at ease to think back to the many people who have accomplished a great feat largely thought to be impossible at the time. My music start-up set out to reinvent the iPod, and it was a big part of our pitch to remind potential investors and hires about how the iPod came out of nowhere to dominate the market, and how such a small thing catapulted Apple into the world’s most valuable company.

Today, I spend most of my time between Unix and Photoshop and at times even wonder how in the world a degree in history has prepared me for any of this. But something about searching Stack Overflow for a solution through mountains of conflicting solutions reminds me of all those nights spent late in the library searching thousands of pages for one sentence that is going to prove my thesis. When I’m in a meeting with a client and they ask me what’s special about my technology I flash back to my seminar classes while I (without thinking) rattle off the history of the entire industry and why this is the future. I could go on and on about how my degree has helped me in my daily life but I would recommend you reading the article. I only share my two cents because I hope that there is some high school senior or college freshman out there who loves history but still wants to be employed when they graduate.