Looking Forward

I’ve decided to follow my passion for history and make it a career. For the last three years, I worked for a management consulting firm in Moncton, New Brunswick. I learned a lot there, especially the need to activate one’s purpose motive, and that’s what I want to do. My overall goal is to land a job at one of Canada’s military museums, historical societies, or heritage institutions.

My first step on this journey is as a candidate in the University of Western Ontario’s Graduate Studies program in Public History. While I already have a research-based Master of Arts, I was particularly attracted to this program’s practical agenda. This is one of the reasons I’m writing this new blog post. Part of the course requirements for our Digital Public History class – History 9808A – is to maintain a blog to spark class discussions, to serve as a project log, to act as an online presence for future employers, and to get comfortable with writing in public.

I’ve maintained my blog on this website for over three years now, and I wrote the blog at Symplicity Designs, but I’m still a work-in-progress when it comes to public writing. The work I do in History 9808A and my other courses in the program will go a long way to preparing me for a career in the public history field.

I’m excited about Digital Public History in particular because it will give me and my classmates a forum to practice digital history skills and to make our work public. Personally, I’m looking forward to designing and producing a podcast. I’ve been on a podcast as a guest before (check out this previous post on my interview with Angus Wallace and WW2 Podcast) and I’m a regular listener to various other history podcasts. I’ll encourage my classmates to check them out at the links below:

• Cool Canadian History by David Borys, PhD
• Dan Snow’s History Hit
• Chalke Valley History Hit with James Holland
• On War and Society with Eric Story

History 9808A wraps up later this fall with an Independent Project meant to give us time to explore an application in digital history. This leads me to what I want to accomplish this term. By December, I would like to have a live website for promoting my first book. Eagles over Husky will be published sometime in Q1 2018 by Helion and Company, based in the United Kingdom. I’ve already bought the domain EaglesoverHusky.com and intend to use http://patrickmdennis.com/ and https://markmanson.net/ as inspiration for my website. I will probably focus more on the book than on myself the author.

A backup idea (and something I’ve already begun) is to design an On This Date in History (#OTDH) Twitter campaign to promote my book. This campaign will be modelled on Twitter accounts such as @BofB1940, @RAAFvictoryroll, and @RealTimeWWII. I’ll be using the Twitter handle @EaglesoverHusky (already active) to execute the campaign.

The next eight months of coursework (followed by a four-month internship) look to be both some of the most challenging and exciting in my career as an historian. I look forward to sharing my trials, tribulations, successes, and achievements with you over the next 12 months.

“Danger gathers upon our path. We cannot afford – and have no right – to look back. We must look forward.” – Winston Churchill, 10 December 1936