Hey /his/ so I'm thinking about what career I want in the future, and since I love history, I've been thinking about becoming a historian. The only problem is that no matter what I google, I can't find a straight forward answer on what they do. So, what is a historians job, not what a historian IS but what do they physically do? Do they spend their time reading all day, and writing reports? Do they just shit around in museums all day? I need an answer
Saying "I want to be an historian" is like saying "I want to be a scientist", there's a fuckton of categories that do a fuckton of different things.
Basically - Historians do historical research professionally.
Some write books and if they pick an appealing subject, they sell them. Some teach.
I had a job doing archival research on military files to try and help identify WWI and WWII bodies when they get found. It didn't even occur to me that this was an application of history education but there you go.
>>1032612
Here are the kinds of jobs and small business activities that historians conduct:
The majority of historians are employed as lecturers by Universities. At current standards this involves producing two to three research monograph equivalents, sucking AHA cock or the equivalent, finally if you're super lucky and good getting a full time job at 35, which involves 60 to 80 hour weeks teaching shits who don't want to be there nationalist lies and pumping out more monograph equivalents on topics which disinterest you. In non-unitary pay systems the pay is worse. The research funding is worse.
The second most common occupation for the historian is the Government Glorifier of Nationalism and the Military. Generally you need to have hit captain or major in the military officer hierarchy to be eligible. (Special forces involve lower requirements). Your national cultural institutions (museum, library or archive as appropriate to your nation's shit fight between curators, librarians and archivists for funding) may also employ glorifiers. You don't control your research, but you have to be a person who believes the old lie dulce et decorum est pro patria mori to get the job.
Another stream is the historian for hire. Here you glorify private and commercial institutions, and the small government institutions, for pay. Remember, your base research rate is the lecture rate and triple triple for oncosts and unbillable hours. You generally need to be someone's son to get work.
Another category of glorifier is the party worker. These tend to be from labour parties and leftwards (bourgeois parties hand out academic sinecures to their old war horses). Here you have to be active senior cadre, continue your "day job" for the party, and write approved party history.
Finally, there's unemployment / disability pension plus living in a caravan near archives. I know at least one historian who made his career like this.
>>1032612
>but what do they physically do?
Plan, prepare and deliver lectures and tutorials, conduct marking, and sit in the attendant staff meetings (60%+ of their time).
>Do they spend their time reading all day, and writing reports?
You generally can't sustain reading for more than two to four hours straight, unless you're on archival materials in which case you can sustain 10+ hours straight (because its archives mang.)
Most people can't write for more than 2 hours a day seriously. Then again 2 hours a day is more than enough to get your thousand words out.
>Do they just shit around in museums all day?
I generally shit once or twice a day, less when reading archives because of the nervous tension and dehydration. Museums have an obligation to collect the physical remains of the past to typify. Historians are interested in the documentary record of the past, and the physical remains of the past are rarely fruitful enough documents. Historians prefer libraries and in particular archives.
Most of their time, though, is taken up by reading books they'd rather not read for teaching, review purposes, or because they are obliged to cite them if only to show they disagree.
>I need an answer
Your needs don't matter in this world, mate. Learn it. Try reading some fucking labour history.
>>1032612
A historian teaches History to faggots doing an arts degree.
>>1032814
I think you'll find that you end up teaching a lot of BSocSc poofters, dykes from BFAs, transvestites from BEng, BSc slotbadgers and BCom/BEcon kiddie fiddlers.
>>1032635
False.
Some historians are teachers. Others are history professors who research from academic institutions and do fieldwork. Some are consultants for TV shows. Others are archivists or historians for their country's government or for museums.
There are two tricks a person thinking about a history career should know though: 1. Have a specialty in history 2. Have a backup plan
>>1032912
>Some historians are teachers.
I know ONE PhD qualified historian who teaches secondary. He is a right wing cunt and was given a sinecure at the private rape house for the bourgeoisie, sorry, private school.
>>1032957
Did your mummy not love you hard enough when you were a baby?
>>1032973
Oh, right, you're an Australian.
