Dr Megan Wang (née Kelleher)

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the blog!

In my last blog, I went through some of the ways to prepare to study History for those of you at the beginning of your studying journey. In this blog, I’m going to be focusing on moving towards the other end of this adventure by looking at how you can use the skills you learned in the workplace. Working on an extended history project can provide you with many transferrable skills, and I want to highlight some of these today. Through looking at my own career, I’m going to be bringing to your attention some ways in which studying History has enabled me to have the opportunities I’ve had.

1.Tutoring

One of the jobs I did whilst undertaking my studies was tutoring. While this primarily focused on English and Maths, I had plenty of opportunity to explain history to my students and to encourage them to learn more. This was a great opportunity for me to learn how to explain complex ideas in a way that made sense to my students, who may not have studied that topic before. My own learning inspired me to focus on overviews of the subject matter, which meant that I was able to encourage more people to like history!

2.Voluntary Work

I’ve done a few pieces of voluntary work over the last few years, most of which again related to working with young people. Doing any sort of voluntary work alongside other commitments can often mean having to time manage effectively, and to ensure the analysis of the feedback you have coming in. Through adapting my essay planning technique to this work, I was able to make sure I stayed on top of everything I needed to do, while my experience of analysing sources meant that I was able to infer from the data key trends and turning points.

3. Heritage

Heritage can mean a lot of things to different people, but to me it means exploring how the past has affected the present. My career has tended to focus on working in the heritage sector, albeit largely outside of the museum world. By working in heritage, I have been able to put my oratory skills to the test through giving talks and tours to a range of age groups. As these events need to be accurate, my favourite part of being a historian comes in: Research! The research skills I learned when starting my interest in history have been adapted and honed over the years, but the fundamentals I learned at the start continue to stand me in good stead!

So, here are just a few ways that I owe my career to studying History – I hope you found it interesting! What ways has the study of History helped you? Please let me know by writing a comment.