klm22

I am in the same situation (currently a sophomore) and have been seeking advice from all kinds of people. Working with a professor seems like the best option (and I've been told that many if not most history professors will use a research assistant over the summer). Try asking professors you're not currently taking classes with. See if you can get the history DUS to forward around an email letting all the professors know you'd like to work with someone. This may well not work (I've so far gotten one maybe out of my efforts), but it's worth trying. The second choice seems to be museums and archives. Unfortunately, it's too late for a number of things (for example, most of the Smithsonian internships had Feb. 1 deadlines), especially if you want to get paid, but I'm looking at a bunch of archive things and smaller museums with March deadlines or no deadline at all. If you know where in the country you want to be, you can usually use a university website to find archives in that area. And.. as a last resort, a librarian I was talking to recently suggested that I get a regular job at my school's (rather extensive) library and try to be placed in a department doing something with manuscripts or microfilm or something vaguely historical. Less exciting, but the campus minimum wage of $11 does have its appeal relative to the same thing at home. Maybe it would be possible to take language classes at the same time?

Hi, I'm a sophomore history major interested in doing something history-related over the summer, both for my personal edification and because I hear it is helpful. I've been told that the best things to do are working as a research assistant to a professor, working at an archive, and working at a museum, in that order. I'm currently working on trying to find a professor to work with (which is difficult), and I'm also putting together a possible independent research project, which I will pursue if I can get funding for it (also pretty hard as a sophomore). So, I'm guessing that I should probably be working on archives as a possibility as well. However, I'm slightly hazy about what exactly one does as an assistant at an archive. How do you make sure you get a position for a history major rather than one for a future librarian? (Or is there a difference?) For that matter, how do you go about getting one of these positions at all? I do have a list of libraries and archives that might be good for my interests (made with the help of one of my professors), but I'm not sure who or how to write to at each of these places, or frankly how to talk intelligently about what I want to do there. Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks.