When I chose to major in history at the start of my undergraduate career, I was certain I would be going to law school and becoming a lawyer. When I changed my mind about that in my sophomore year, I knew I would stick with history because I loved it. I graduated from Temple in 2016 with a bachelor's in history and a special foreign language certificate in Italian. I chose Italian because of my familial background and a desire to study abroad in Italy—which I did do in 2014.
A month after graduation, I moved to Newport News, VA, five minutes from Yorktown and twenty from Williamsburg. I applied for every job with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation for which I could be qualified and obtained a postgraduate internship in development. I've gotten to be extremely involved in history despite working in development. In fact, I am writing this in my office in the St. George Tucker House, built in 1718, just off Palace Green.
Our division takes a day to engage in the activities that our visitors enjoy so that we may better convey information and relate to our donors. In September, I tested the new musket range, where I shot 18th-century flintlock muskets and fowlers. That was one of the best experiences I've had here thus far—feeling the weight of the musket, trying to load it clumsily and slowly—because I felt closer to the part of history I focused on at Temple, the American Revolution.
In August 2017, I will be attending the College of William & Mary as a master's student in the Higher Education Administration program with the hope of becoming an academic advisor. While I feel confident in this new direction, I won't forget that studying history provided me with the skills and knowledge to get to this point. As a history student at Temple, I drastically improved my writing, research method, critical thinking, and historical understanding. I became significantly more organized, efficient, and detail-oriented. The only concern I'm left with after graduating from Temple is that I know Chicago format with my eyes closed—but at the School of Education at William & Mary, I will be writing almost exclusively in APA.