"The honors thesis program (The 104 series) changed the way I wrote about history and understood my major."
Current Position: Grad Student at University of Southern California
Major: History & Microbiology
Graduation: 2017
What do you do as a grad student?
As a first year PhD student I take graduate level History courses and work on improving my foreign language skills.
How did your UC Davis education prepare you for this work?
I was very lucky to have been able to take a couple of graduate courses while I was an undergrad at Davis. Learning what strategies did and didn't work for me in an advanced, discussion-based class made it so much easier for me to handle and balance my work load later in graduate school.
Are there any classes or activities from Davis you found particularly helpful?
The honors thesis program (The 104 series) changed the way I wrote about history and understood my major. I was headed down a completely different career path until the 104 series allowed me to conduct my own research. I had significant help in the process from my wonderful thesis advisor as well as other amazing professors in the department and I came out learning so much about what it meant to be a historian. The end product—my undergraduate thesis—became extremely foundational to my research interests and taught me so much about the process it takes to produce historical scholarship.
Do you have any advice for current students?
Read widely! There's no way to figure out what you're interested in if you're not exposing yourself to different topics and ways of thinking.