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Our office was inundated, today.

Not figuratively. Literally. Swimming in water. Raining from the ceiling. Weeping down the walls.

It’s a major disaster that began with sloppy renovation work on the floor above (broke the water pipe) and has ended in possibly losing every single student and financial file (paper copy) in our offices. Possibly also taking out the secretary’s computer and while she backs up regularly, I’m not sure if that wasn’t also affected.

Two, maybe three, printers were filled enough with water I could tip them over and pour it out on the desk or floor. Shelves of books were soaked, as were the wooden shelves holding them. Water was puddling into the hallways and under some of the office doors across the hall.

Thankfully, not only did our custodial staff spring into action with an industrial wetvac, but security and physical plant staff and administrators have been by to document the damage and start the recovery efforts.

It’s going to be a long month/term/year.

My estimable colleague Andrew Smith has blogged very thoughtfully on the ways that historians can illuminate the true value of the census in Canadian society, both through our study of the past applications of this data and our promotion of statistical literacy in future generations of voters and politicians.

I commented there but I will reiterate here that it’s sad how stoutly math-phobic many history students seem to be. By equating mathematics and statistics with something they can’t and don’t really want to learn, too many people leave themselves open to be manipulated about history and their current world by those who count on that essential ignorance!

If we get a session chair, I should be presenting at the Big Berks in June of 2011!

*gleefully dives back into research and writing*

We’re enjoying scads of sunshine, here, with even a break in the brutal humidity. Cool breezes course into the house via one set of windows and chase themselves out the other side.

We’ll have lasagna and salad for dinner, accompanied by a a lovely red wine. We went out and restocked our “wine cellar” (aka as the bottom shelf of the pantry) with a few bottles of their merlot. And now that our hammock’s assembled and installed in a corner of our back deck, I think I’ll read another couple of chapters from New Media, 1740-1915 out there after dinner.

Yes, it’s a pretty darned good day.

I don’t know about others but my summer writing time, especially once the kids are out of school, comes in dribs and drabs. I read for a bit, switch windows to whatever I’m working on and stuff something into place, go back to reading, write a little more, then it’s time to swap out the laundry, drive a kid somewhere or deal with another kid crisis.

Focus lost. Sometimes hours pass before I’m back on the same track and then I realize that I really need to pick up another bit of reading from the remote database to work with.

The database link goes down. I sigh and call it quits for now — too tired and lacking focus to turn to another element of the task.Time to make dinner and someone’s going to want a walk to the park shortly, anyway. Maybe I need to spend more of the term time writing and more of the summer gathering and roughly sorting?

My host has a problem with one of their blog servers so there are intermittent problems affecting this and other blogs on sites they host. So if you see a 403, don’t panic. I’ve not gone anywhere, they’re just trying to fix the problem!

In the meantime, why not craft yourself a cool new answering machine message, courtesy of the Old Spice Man?

SWAN DIVE!

Staging the Henrician Court, led by esteemed early modern scholars Thomas Betteridge and Greg Walker, is a great site for those interested in the early modern court or theatre. The site features a performance of John Heywood’s Play of the Wether at Hampton Court, itself, a regular site for such productions into the Stuart period.

What’s even better is that you can enter into the debate over the play, its staging, context and interpretation right there in the forum. A fascinating and exemplary site for early modernists!

Yeah, ‘ha-ha’ — very funny. The number of times I get people telling me that the inevitable end of someone taking a history degree is to work in fast food (according to conventional wisdom, philosophers drive cabs, but historians and English majors take orders at the local McD’s)? Far beyond counting.

What’s frustrating is that, yes, there’s not an easy and seamless career path beckoning history graduates when they take their diplomas. But does that mean that you are doomed to a life of endless hair-net wearing with your history degree?

Of course not. I’m pleased to see that the AHA is sharing historians’ advice on employment prospects for majors in a forthcoming pamphlet, What to Do with a History Major. One common thread throughout the list of examples in their blog post is the need to work at finding work.

There aren’t going to be employers impatiently waiting for anyone coming out with a random bachelor’s degree, whereas science and engineering programs often have career fairs or prospective employers courting graduates. So history undergraduates entering their senior year (or recent graduates of B.A. and even M.A. programs) need to put a priority on making themselves “employable” and doing whatever they can to dig out possibilities. Some might have to move to areas where entry-level employment in major corporations is possible, or hotfoot it to the halls of power for law and government jobs. Others might want to combine their education with another qualification (museum studies, experience in the business world or, in areas where they are actually hiring teachers, a B.Ed.).

But all of this also depends on having a strong B.A. experience behind you. Can you write well? Can you research effectively? Can you look through materials and lay out the possible interpretations or applications rather as you did with causes or effects in your undergraduate work?

This is why it’s frustrating to see so many passive upper-year students, trying to coast to a C+ grade instead of seizing the opportunities in their courses and across the university to build up some skills that will be important to a future career. Yes, I’m aware that some are working outside of school can be a daunting drain on your time. I worked throughout my own undergraduate years, culminating in a full-time retail job held alongside my full-time student work in my senior year. But there are workshops, invited speakers, seminar sessions and other opportunities available during your education that will be much more difficult to access later in life.

Check out those on-campus conferences! Work on your writing! Pursue opportunities to develop your research skills! Learn how to sell yourself as the kind of worker that you want to be (or build the skillset to become an entrepreneur). Don’t wait until graduation to start thinking about what you want to and can do with your education.