Let me go a little bit more into what I am doing with the blog and the volunteering. My overall goals as a historian will be to consult with museums, write and do research, and influence education and bringing the humanities back into education.
My interest in the museum is two fold. I will learn what is sought out in consultants, and gain experience in the museum, and references, and also, it is a museum that is about my city, so it will help my blog. This volunteer experience will be treated as an internship, however, it will not be an official internship.
My blog will be more like mini research papers that reach out to the general public. They will have references and a great deal of research. I will also work on writing samples based upon this research. It won't just be a blog on places I've traveled or something. Of course it may involve traveling, but each post will be written, readable to the general public, but researched as though each post were a miniature paper.
I am also placing so much influence on the GRE because my undergrad were well below stellar. In a lower level school, that I learned a lot from, I didn't even make a 3.0. Now I didn't push myself either because I didn't have plans that would involve graduate school in 2008, when I graduated. My top school is also an Ivy League, in which I was told to shoot for a top 90th percent on my GRE. I've also been told that these schools don't look at scores to see your potential, but rather your work available, which I will try to make impressive.
What are your thoughts with this information?