Start preparing for a History PhD program before school starts; the change in lifestyle will be less of a shock to your system if you don't go into it completely cold. Here are a few tips for preparing academically, mentally, emotionally, and financially.
Academic Preparation for a History PhD Program
While you should really spend your last couple weeks before starting a PhD program relaxing and not thinking about academic things (since it will take up the majority of your time very, very soon), there are a few things that might be worth doing in the months before school starts that won't actually take up too much time:
- Read (translation: skim) at least a couple of recent, good books in your field. If you've been in touch with your advisor, ask for any book recommendations. You might also want to check out some of the historical studies considered groundbreaking if you haven't already, even if they were written quite some time ago.
- There are a few important names that will come up again and again when you're a graduate student in history. If you've never heard of/read anything by, for example, Michel Foucault or Karl Marx, you should probably look them up. Many historians would agree that works by influential names are important to know about. Five minutes with a search engine is really all you need (just don't tell your professors that you learned about a particular theory on Wikipedia...). Get some of the basics of their ideas, and the name-dropping (of both people and theories) that occurs way too often in grad school courses will seem slightly less overwhelming, though not any less pretentious.
Keep your brain active! Take plenty of time to relax, but do the occasional activity that keeps your mind sharp for school:
- Write something. Anything. If you are an undergraduate or Masters student going straight into a PhD program in the fall, you'll have plenty of school-related opportunities to write. If you're working, find either an opportunity within your job to do some kind of writing, or take some time to write outside of work. It can be a short article for a local paper, a stream-of-consciousness journal entry, a letter to your great-aunt in New Zealand, whatever. Just as long as you take some time in your life before school to put coherent sentences together.
- You should also just read books for fun. It's important no to bog your brain down with too much academic stuff before you even start. Go ahead and fuel your addiction to vampire novels, reread the whole Harry Potter series, pick up the latest mystery thriller, dig through your collection of favorite books from when you were younger, or finally locate that book you've been wanting to read for ages.
- Do brain teasers and games, such as crossword puzzles, Sudoku, and Scrabble.
Don't forget one of the more practical considerations: personal finances.
- Make sure you have enough money in the bank to get you through the first few weeks. If you're funded through a research assistantship, teaching assistantship, or some other sort of graduate salary or stipend, it might not make its way to your bank, even via direct deposit, until toward the middle or end of September.
- Get a credit card with as low an interest rate as possible. While some would probably advise against getting a credit card, it will be essential in case of emergency large purchases (i.e. car repairs). You will probably use it as a History PhD student, unless you're already financially secure/independently wealthy. With a graduate student salary, getting a good low-interest card will probably be a challenge, but keep at it. Some offer promotional low rates for a certain period of time, like six months to a year. Use sparingly, and pay it off as quickly as possible.
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