Liberal Arts Voices

Read the perspectives of our current students

PSU HISTORY ALUMNI CAREERS PANEL

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Posted By: Career Enrichment Network

ONCE I GRADUATE WITH MY HISTORY DEGREE, WHAT JOBS AND CAREER OPTIONS ARE AVAILABLE TO ME?
… attend a careers panel event for some answers & excellent advice

PENN STATE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE:

PSU HISTORY ALUMNI CAREERS PANEL
(7 PSU History grads will talk about their careers & how the Major helped)

DATE:   Thursday October 13 2016
TIME:  6:30 – 8:15
LOCATION:  360 Willard

 List of Panelists

  • Amy Shulman (class of 1995)—Senior Deputy Attorney General, PA Office of Attorney General, Bureau of Consumer Protection
  • Jeremy Garskof (class of 2005)—Director of Technical Services, Musselman Library, Gettysburg College
  • Emily Sutton (class of 2014)—Public Access Line, FBI
  • Matt Hardy (class of 1996)—Director of Mount Nittany Health Foundation
  • Laura Lawfer Orr (class of 2006)—Deputy Education Director at Hampton Roads Naval Museum
  • Kevin Wulfhorst (class of 1986)—Supervisory Intelligence Analyst, FBI
  • Matthew Zabolotny (class of 1997)—Vice President, Revenue Cycle Practice, Netsmart Technologies

PSU History Alumni Careers Panel

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ONCE I GRADUATE WITH MY HISTORY DEGREE, WHAT JOBS AND CAREER OPTIONS ARE AVAILABLE TO ME?

… attend a careers panel event for some answers & excellent advice

 

PENN STATE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE:

 PSU HISTORY ALUMS CAREERS PANEL

6 PSU History grads will talk about their careers & how the Major helped

Thursday October 16, 6:30 – 8:15PM, 201 Thomas

  List of Panelists

  •  John Knorr—Chief Deputy Attorney General, PA Attorney General Office
  •  Jon Schmidt—Architectural Historian with Maryland Department of Transportation
  •  Sarah Tarnopolsky—Executive at Twitter
  •  Ken Hickman—Director of Penn State All-Sports Museum
  •  Patrick Miller—Research Assistant for Joint Economic Committee, Washington, DC
  •  Matthew Zabolotny—Vice President of IT, NHS Human Services, Lafayette Hill, PA

Curing Wanderlust: Liberal Arts Edition

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“How did you end up in Maine?”

If I had a dollar, ladies and gentlemen, for every time I heard this question, I may successfully be able to purchase the entire new autumn wardrobe I so long for. Alas, the magical dollar fairy does not appear when summoned, so I have to resign myself to answering. Depending on who is asking, there are two scenarios that will play out, and for the benefit of you readers, I would be more than glad to outline each. Also, my name is Shannon Ratliff, and I am a junior double majoring in History and English with a minor in Latin American studies, just in case you were wondering.  

The short, basic story is that I had an internship at the Maine Historical Society (MHS), a small, yet beautiful building set amidst newly renovated gardens in the middle of downtown Portland, Maine. My title was Library Intern, but the task I was assigned was so much more than sitting at a circulation desk. My supervisor for the summer, Nancy Noble, placed me in charge of processing my own collection for the Maine Historical Society catalogue. The collection was a gift to the society from the Women’s Literary Union (WLU), a generous donation of six huge archival boxes that contained everything from financial ledgers to receipts to correspondence reports to photographs that ranged from 1889 to 2011. Because the WLU is moving to a smaller location, they decided to grant their documents to the historical society for scholars to access for research purposes and to guarantee the safe preservation of their history for the years to come. My task was to comb through the documents, find a pattern that makes sense for cataloguing, and to meticulously organize the collection into series, volumes, and folders to allow the easy location of such documents for scholars and library patrons of the MHS.  

The longer, truer story is that I picked a location on a map this previous winter and decided to discover New England, lobster rolls and all. With my dual major of History and English, both under the Liberal Arts umbrella, the collection offered to me by Nancy was perfect for my interests. The WLU was one of the most prominent women’s study clubs in New England during the early 20th Century, and this combination of English and History fit my degrees perfectly. I had never been to New England before; born in Maryland, most of my travels always stayed below the good ol’ Mason-Dixon line.

At this point, you may be wondering what this has to do with my internship and the skills I have learned while completing it.   While we are at university, while we have the means and the time (most importantly, the time), to travel somewhere new for the summer, carving out a fresh life beyond our comfort zone is one of the most important aspects of a college experience, in my opinion. This is why I love my Liberal Arts degrees: you can go anywhere, you can do anything. Yes, you will be asked about a million times if you will be a teacher or a tour guide, but scholars of the College of the Liberal Arts understand the value of the foundations we learn while attending Penn State. Critical thinking, organization, and adapting to new situations are all skills we utilize in our fields every day in the classroom, but they also prepare us for the real world. Finding a new place to live, creating a new existence for yourself is never easy, but approaching these problems the way we are taught to approach a historical question or the meaning of literary metaphor is one of the best ways I have found to conquer pesky, yet basic questions of life, such as: “Where will I live for three months?” “How do I live like a local?” “Why don’t these dishes magically wash themselves?”    So yes, eking out a new existence is difficult, but I promise that if you try and follow your Liberal Arts hearts, you will be successful! Go anywhere! Email everywhere! There are so many options, from publishing agencies to historical societies to multi-national corporations, that the only question that will truly be the hardest to answer is this:   “Where do I want to live next summer?”

Watch this video to hear more from Shannon about her summer internship with the Maine Historical Society:

The Origins of Halloween

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Trio of Pumpkins
Originally uploaded by MacKinnon Photography

This writer could doubtlessly spend days and hundreds more pages investigating the history of this spooky day. As a timelier alternative, I’ll use no further space but in recalling some of the peculiar practices of Halloween that take root in the shadows of an ancient past.

What are we celebrating?

Rewind over 2,000 years to find yourself amongst a Pagan tribe in ancient Ireland. Today is October 31st: the last day of the Celtic calendar. More than that, today is the Day of the Dead. It is the day of the death of Somhain, Celtic God of the Dead. In translation, it is “summer’s end,” the day when all that is living, and growing, and shining is swallowed by the shadowy, indicative silence of winter.* Tomorrow, November 1st, marks the New Year, though not a particularly cheery one.

On this day, you and all of those around you carry a great and very real fear, for, at night, the spirits of the dead will walk amongst the living to reestablish their presence. You crowd around a huge bonfire until midnight marks the death of light, the death of a dying year. You arrive in disguise, so that you may blend in with the dead that roam restlessly about the countryside. Like all of your neighbors, you’ve already placed exquisite meals upon your windowsills, outside your doors, covering each opening to your home with a collage of your finest cuisine. For whom? None other than the dead themselves. To them, you offer treats as a gesture of peace to the lurking souls. This is a night of remembrance, though it is no less one of the utmost fear. You wait, trembling, hoping to live through the Festival of the Dead…**

What are we saying/seeing?

To override these Pagan practices across ancient Ireland, Pope Gregory III declared November 1st All Hallows’ Day, a holiday in recognition of all saints past and present. Despite this celebration having picked up and spread throughout Europe, the Pagan observance of the Day of the Dead continued each preceding day, becoming known as All Hallows’ Eve, and eventually, Hallowe’en.

How did it get here, you might ask. Most officially, Celtic traditions came to America with the mass immigration after the Irish potato blight in the mid-1800s. Around this time, the gigantic bonfires during All Hallows’ Eve found themselves contained as embers within carved out gourds and pumpkins for use as lanterns–jack-o-lanterns, that is. Even the costumes used today are reminiscent of the disguises that the Celts once used to blend in with the dead on All Hallows’ Eve.***

What are we doing?

The meals on sills from ancient times were the way of preventing the tricks, or the tampering of the dead with the affairs of the living. Today, the vagrant spirits in ravenous search of food are ecstatic children, dressed as something of the sort, seeking the sugary sweets of kind neighbors.

Same thing? Not quite, but for the most part the idea is there. Each knock on the door and ensuing exclamation of “Trick or Treat” from an eager child represents the act of begging by a restless ghost. And from the other end, each Snickers’ bar, popcorn ball (my favorite), and random can of generic soda from Aunt Lucille is the offering made (the treat) to prevent the wrath and haunting of the dead left unfed. Celts were not alone in this annual ritual. No, it occurred all across Europe in the same age, with Mexico’s Dia de los Muertos, even among the Egyptians with the death of Osiris 2,000 years before the Celts. And its message, consciously or not, lives on in the proceedings of our holiday today.

Halloween, though celebrated differently and under different names across the world, has but one deep-seated origin that ensures its existence today: fear. It’s become one day to recognize fear of all darkness, fear of all death. What we know of now is a spooky commemoration and manifestation of that very same fear. Of the death of the sun. The death of growth. The death of the fear of Death. ‘Tis truly the Day of the Dead…

Pretty ghoul, huh?

Happy Halloween!

References:
* Bradbury, Ray, and Joseph A. Mugnaini. The Halloween Tree. New York: Knopf; distributed by Random House, 1972. Print.
** “Halloween — History.com Articles, Video, Pictures and Facts.” History.com — History Made Every Day — American & World History. Web. 20 Oct. 2011 .
***Trevarthen, G. A. (2010). The celtic origins of halloween transcend fear. Phi Kappa Phi Forum, 90(3), 6-6-7.

PSU Libraries – Learning about Penn State

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Carnegie Historical 001
Originally uploaded by pennstatelive

After looking at many different areas in the library, anyone can quickly see that there is a lot of Penn State memorabilia and trivia all over the place.  From the (recently moved!) stuffed lion in the lobby to the pictures and information all about the library and exhibits on past Penn Staters, we can see that there is so much out there to learn about our school.  But how often do we actually go out of our way to learn about the rich history around us?  In this post I want to let you know about our school’s history and where learning more about Penn State is possible.

When on my tour of the Special Collections section (blogged about in my last post), I mentioned the cold storage and the collection of both black and white and color photographs.  Many of these photos are of Penn State and the surrounding area, as are much of the maps in the map room.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who has gone around Rec Hall looking at the photographs of old sports teams and therefore, I can’t be the only one who finds older photos to be interesting and enlightening.  That being said, I was intrigued by the photo collections, a growing number of which have been posted online, and I believe that many of you will find them both entertaining and enlightening as well.

When looking at the online database, it seems to reflect the spirit one sees all around Penn State. Specifically, there are lots of pictures featuring PSU athletics, which Michelle mentioned was also the case for the pictures in storage.  This makes sense though, since it’s pretty easy to photograph sporting events and teams.  My favorite pictures are those that show the evolution of the Nittany Lion mascot, which are featured prominently in the athletics pictures.  Picture collections, whether online or in person, are a great way to see the documentation of our University’s history, and not to mention just fun to page through and see what those before us were doing.  

Another fun resource found on the library’s web pages is a catalogue of all the digitized copies of La Vie, the Penn State yearbook (copies of the yearbook are also in the special collections library).  When I accessed the yearbooks online, I went right to the oldest copy (naturally) to see all the differences between the first and more recent yearbooks.  I think my favorite page of the old yearbook was the “Yells” page, which listed the chants for each of the classes from ’89 to ’92.  The ’89 yell goes: 

“Haec! Hoc!

Eighty-Nine!

Every Time!

Roo! Rah!”

I’m not kidding.  Now, the yearbook did not detail whether or not this was a serious chant, but I’m personally quite glad that we have our “We are!” instead of “Roo Rah!” It was also crazy to see the small amount of people in each class.  It’s a far cry from the many campuses, medical centers, law schools, and thousands of undergraduates and graduates alike that now populate the Penn State community.  The design, of course, is quite different as well.  No photographs grace the pages, and cute plate designs decorate many of the introductory pages.  Looking at the 2000 yearbook online, the graphics, photographs, and geometric use of text immediately catches the eye, which contrasts strongly with the whimsical designs and some hand-written entries in the 1890 yearbook.  Combined with the lengthier list of fraternities (and the addition of sororities), the amazing list of student programs, and the extended text in general, it is easy to see how our alma mater has progressed.  You can check out the yearbooks online for yourself by visiting the Penn State Libraries’ website.

Another way to see the progress of our university is to see the physical expansion of the school through the buildings, architecture and landscaping.  The Penn State Landmarks are highlighted on the library website along with many more historical pieces focusing on Penn State, from its presidents to the history of the Nittany Lion.  The oral histories on the page in particular seem like a unique and amazing resource to be examined.  You can find all of these sources on the Penn State Libraries’ website.  

I hope that with this post I have ignited a little interest in Penn State history in all of you.  I think we sometimes take our school and all of its amazing history and resources for granted, and we should be sure to take the time to discover all our school and our library have to offer– often these resources are at our very fingertips with online access.  So go forth and learn!

Lots of Interesting Work In Store!

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As finals week rolled around, I was soo ready to be done with school. Not that I didn’t love Penn State or my new-found best friends, but I was certainly ready for a break from the work. Well, the school work was over of course, but “work”? Not so much. When I arrived home, I immediately went back to full time work as a waitress. I enjoy waitressing, though; it’s nice walking out with money every night!

This week, my other work began: my internship at the Blair County Historical Society. I am a History and Spanish major, and because I am uninterested in teaching, I knew that experience in historical research was essential to discovering what my potential future in History could be. The Historical Society has a set of letters and papers of a local war veteran named Jacob Higgins. Higgins was a participant in the Mexican and Civil War, and the documents they have also contain pieces of his diary and memoirs from the Mexican War. Soo cool! It was incredible to actually get my hands on this stuff and read through some of the events that took place in Higgins’ war life.

When I started two days ago, I began by skimming through the box, trying to acclimate to the script and language. On Thursday, I began to sort the the papers by separating Mexican and Civil War articles, and from there, organizing the many military orders that Higgins’ saved throughout the years. Along with my service to the Historical Society, I also have some work to do on my own. At the end of the summer, I have to write a 20 page research paper, on basically any subject that I feel I can successfully research in relation to my Higgins and his duty in the Mexican War.

In conclusion, it’s going to by an eventful summer: lots to do in only a few months. We’ll see what happens!

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