I left academia about the same time that I married Jim.  He was 2 years into his History PhD and I was signing up for about another 4 years of him being a student, followed by the better part of a lifetime of him being a part of an academic community.  Our community is and will continue to be made up of historians and their partners.  Fortunately, I like historians (having almost become one myself).  And while their partners are diverse, historians tend to attract pretty amazing people that I’ve been lucky enough to get to know.  So here is my post on what I love about being part of a community that includes a fair number of historians.

As a recovering historian, I like the occasional hit of history.  OK, I know that history isn’t really a drug but I imagine that I’m like a lot of people out there in the “real world” and don’t work in the same field that I studied in undergrad or during a MA.  And while I’ve moved on to something quite different from history in my day job it doesn’t mean that I still don’t enjoy history.  By being married to a historian and having historian friends I still get a regular dose of history.  And because our friends study very different fields of history, the doses that I do get are quite diverse.  An added bonus is whenever I do need a historical expert (which can actually happen in municipal Sustainability Office) I don’t have to look far.

Historians are great to have conversations with.  Just don’t expect it to be all fluffy chat about what was on TV last night or on the latest beard grooming techniques.  Even when they aren’t talking shop, they are still applying the skills of their trade to argue their opinions and to challenge yours.  Increasingly, historians are starting to apply their historical perspectives to current issues, like through Active History.  And the ones that I know are astonishingly up to speed on current affairs.  It keeps us non-historians on our toes and brings us perspectives that we might not always get.

Historians (and likely PhD students in general) are not following a conventional life path.  Odds are with their smarts they could have been lawyers or doctors (the medical kind) or anything else more economically viable.   Authorities such as The Simpsons and 30 Rock argue that graduate school isn’t a good “life choice” or that as people graduate students are “the worst”.  But there is something missing from these pop culture observations.  Historians have followed their passion.  They have made a deliberate choice to do something that they love (and presumably are good at) rather than something where they could be making more money but would be less happy with.  And to get back to my earlier point about historians tending to attract pretty amazing people, the partners of the historians I know also tend to do something that they are passionate about which makes for a great group of people to spend time with.

And speaking of partners, as diverse as we might be we also have a fair amount in common.  To varying degrees we’ve experienced the rollercoaster schedule of our partners’ TA jobs, the side projects they take on (rather than just writing their dissertations), coming home to a partner who hasn’t been outside yet that day and is fairly dazed because they’ve been reading or writing for hours, the frustrations of the CUPE 3903 strike, the departmental gossiping, and knowing that when our partners are finally finished their PhD that they might end up with a job anywhere (Brandon, Manitoba here we come).  Last summer a few of us had the experience of being “history-widows” at the same time (when our historians all went on research trips without us).  One weekend we went to Niagara to taste wine and eat cheese and donuts and another berry picking in the Greenbelt.

Does your community include a historian or academic?  Or, do you have a community that is built around a common profession?